BTO CH2

Shao Zhan.

Xu Sheng had heard this name no less than six times in a single day.

Every subject teacher walked in and started with, “Guess who placed first in the grade this time? Forget it, no need to guess, there’s no suspense. But it still needs to be said: Shao Zhan beat second place by a full twenty-something points this time.”

Then they would pass down the high-scoring exam paper, of which over thirty copies had been made: “Look at his problem-solving process, and then look at yourselves.”

Originally, Xu Sheng didn’t even know which ‘Shao’ or which ‘Zhan’ it was. When the paper was passed down from the front, he reached out to take it, intending to toss it aside casually, but accidentally caught sight of the handwriting on the photocopy.

It wasn’t that he wanted to look, but primarily because this handwriting was truly hard to ignore.

The brushstrokes were vigorous and slightly cursive. Xu Sheng himself was also a writer of the “cursive” faction, but this cursive was clearly at a high level, completely different from his own random scribbles.

A classmate had already started blowing smoke: “The Study God’s handwriting… even if I practiced with a copybook for ten years, I couldn’t write like this. Is this even handwriting a human can produce?”

“Cut the chatter,” the teacher said, looking directly at Xu Sheng. “I don’t expect you all to write like this. I just hope certain students in our class can write legibly enough for people to understand. It’s one thing if you don’t know how to do the questions, but to not even get the points for neatness?”

Student Xu Sheng, who couldn’t get points for neatness, folded the paper a few times and stuffed it into his desk.

Xu Sheng’s campus life had always been plain, unadorned, and dull.

Sleeping, playing games, and standing in the hallway for punishment.

There was no fourth possibility.

During the last period of the afternoon, Biology, the teacher asked him to stand up and answer a question.

Xu Sheng tossed his phone into his desk and stood up half a beat late. “Teacher, I didn’t hear you clearly, could you repeat that?”

The biology teacher had watched this student sit in the corner playing on his phone for most of the class as if no one else was there. She was already holding in a bellyful of anger, and now her face completely iced over. “It’s in the book. Do you even know what page we’re on?” The biology teacher suppressed her anger and pointed him in the right direction. “Page four.”

Xu Sheng picked up an English textbook, flipped a few pages, and asked, “Fill in the blanks with the given words?”

“…”

The whole class was dead silent.

“Ah,” Xu Sheng gleaned something from this deathly silence. “This isn’t English class?”

Two minutes later, Xu Sheng walked out of the classroom with his phone and a power bank he swiped from his desk mate. He stood leaning back against the railing, incidentally making eye contact with the students in neighboring Class 6 through their open classroom door.

His phone buzzed twice.

It was a message from Zhang Feng.

-Boss, standing for punishment again?

-Screw off.

-I originally thought that with us being so far apart, I wouldn’t be able to see you often. As it turns out, almost every class, all I have to do is look up at the hallway and I can see your heroic posture.

-Why don’t you come out and stand for a while too, then you can see me even clearer.

-That won’t be necessary… I’ll just wave at you as a token gesture, can you see?

Xu Sheng looked up and saw that at the end of the hallway, by the window, a hand was genuinely sticking out.

He lowered his head again and replied: Fuck, are you an idiot.

Zhang Feng asked again: Going to the internet cafe tonight? The usual place?

Xu Sheng didn’t reply immediately. He backed out of the chat window. Sitting quietly in his recent contacts list was someone with the name “Mom”.

The message had been received two days ago.

[Mom]: Have you arrived at school?

[Mom]: You refused to live at home. Just attend your classes properly, and I won’t bother you about anything else. If you really can’t study, just graduating smoothly is enough, right?

[Mom]: You’re a sophomore now. Making you study isn’t for my sake. With the way you are, what do you plan to do in the future?!

Xu Sheng glanced at it, his expression not fluctuating at all, and then replied “Sure” to Zhang Feng.

After replying, he shoved his phone back into his pants pocket. He moved his fingers, his index finger casually pressing against the second knuckle of his thumb, producing a crisp crack.

The biology teacher was writing on the blackboard and accidentally glanced outside, noticing that the boy standing in the hallway had no proper posture at all, leaning against the railing as if he had no bones. Frowning, she looked away again.

Ring ring ring—

The school dismissal bell rang.

The biology teacher put down her chalk. “Alright, class dismissed. I’ll have the class rep take a picture of a few extra credit questions and send them to the group… And you out there, come in.” As the biology teacher said this, she looked toward the hallway again.

The hallway was completely empty, with no one in sight. Xu Sheng had already dismissed himself right on the dot when the bell rang.

There was an old-fashioned residential area near the school. Outside the winding alleys of white walls and gray tiles, a commercial street had developed, complete with accessory shops, snack shops… and a shady internet cafe where you didn’t need an ID to get online.

The internet cafe was hidden away. You had to go in through the back door of a small restaurant, go up to the second floor, and push open the glass doors.

Xu Sheng was a regular at that internet cafe.

Zhang Feng didn’t live on campus. By the time he packed his bag and rushed over with a few bros, Xu Sheng had already claimed the computer in the furthest corner. This master wasn’t even playing games; he had headphones on, one leg propped up on the edge of his chair, huddled there watching a movie.

“What’s this, why isn’t there a plot?” Zhang Feng paid his fee, casually tossed his backpack onto the floor, and leaned over to look at Xu Sheng’s monitor while waiting for his own to boot up. After a long while, realizing he couldn’t understand it, he turned his attention to the title instead. “…BBC’s The Power of Art. Fuck, a documentary?”

Xu Sheng held the mouse with one hand, dragging the progress bar.

Zhang Feng issued a soul-searching question: “You came to an internet cafe to watch this? Why don’t you just watch the Evening News broadcast?”

Xu Sheng didn’t look like he was watching the documentary very seriously anyway. He raised a hand and slid his headphones back a bit to hear Zhang Feng better. “The Evening News is at seven. It hasn’t started yet.”

Zhang Feng: “…”

Xu Sheng closed the documentary: “I’m kidding, log in to the game.”

Xu Sheng played a few rounds with them. During this time, Zhang Feng received a call. His mother scolded him on the other end: “Are you courting death? Look at the time, why aren’t you home yet?” Zhang Feng lied through his teeth: “There are a few questions I don’t understand, I stayed behind to ask a classmate…”

Zhang Feng’s mom didn’t believe her son’s bullshit at all: “Bullshit! Is your classmate next to you? Why don’t I hear anyone explaining questions?”

Driven into a corner, Zhang Feng had no choice but to cast a pleading look at Xu Sheng.

While tapping on his keyboard, Xu Sheng played along, saying in a convincing tone, “This question is actually quite simple.”

Zhang Feng signaled him with his eyes: ‘If you’re going to bullshit, bullshit a bit more.’

Xu Sheng: “I’ll speak, you write.”

Xu Sheng acted the part quite well, dragging out the last syllable half a beat: “‘Solution’, colon.”

Zhang Feng: “…”

“And then?” Zhang Feng waited ages but no follow-up came. “…Say a bit more.”

Xu Sheng: “And then you can look at the next question.”

“…………”

Fortunately, Zhang Feng’s mom couldn’t clearly hear what Xu Sheng was actually saying over the phone: “Then come back early after your classmate finishes explaining, Mom made your favorite braised pork.”

Urged to the point where he couldn’t delay any longer, Zhang Feng roared internally before putting on his backpack and logging off: Anyone else would have been a better choice to ask for help! The network admin of this shady internet cafe probably understood high school concepts better than the guy sitting next to him!

Zhang Feng hung up the phone. “Boss, your tutoring is truly enlightening.”

Having finished clearing the minion wave, Xu Sheng said, “You’re welcome.”

“I’m heading back then,” Zhang Feng said before leaving. “Don’t stay too late either. School just started, it wouldn’t be good to get caught.”

Xu Sheng unscrewed the mineral water bottle beside him and gave a sound of acknowledgment, doing so extremely perfunctorily.

“Just head back,” Xu Sheng said. “They won’t catch me.”

Xu Sheng soaked in the internet cafe until it was dark outside. As the BBC documentary neared its end, he felt a bit tired of watching, leaned his head back, and took off his headphones, intending to go to the front desk to buy something to eat.

Aside from instant noodles, the front desk only had things like duck legs and chicken claws. Xu Sheng glanced over them and really had no appetite, ultimately just grabbing a pack of mints from the side.

After paying, he unwrapped one and popped it into his mouth, pushing open the door to get some fresh air in the stairwell.

He hadn’t taken two steps before a loud bang came from the area where sundries were piled up in the stairwell.

“This is all the money you have?”

“My breakfast money for tomorrow is in there too, I really don’t have anymore…” It was a boy’s voice, sounding submissive and timid.

Bang—!

Another sound of something being kicked over.

“I told you, if you couldn’t scrape together two hundred this time, don’t blame us for not being polite,” the person kicking things had a hoarse voice. “Are you looking for a beating?”

These kinds of shady internet cafes were inherently high-risk zones.

With all sorts of sketchy characters mixing together, it wasn’t surprising for this kind of thing to happen.

The mint in Xu Sheng’s mouth felt exceptionally cold. He leaned against the wall and listened for a moment, crunched the candy to pieces, and then casually strolled over toward the pile of junk.

In the space enclosed by the junk stood four people. They sported the quintessential gangster bleached-blonde hair and weren’t wearing uniforms, so they probably weren’t students from Sixth High. The grayish-blue uniform on the person they were surrounding, however, was quite eye-catching.

“I’m sorry, please let me go, tomorrow, I’ll definitely give it to you tomorrow…”

The four blonde punks finished counting the hundred-something yuan in their hands, exchanged glances, and laughed, “Tomorrow? Tomorrow it won’t be this amount.”

They didn’t get to laugh for long, because just as the words left his mouth, the one holding the money felt a tap on his shoulder from behind.

“—Who is it?!”

“Who I am isn’t important.” Xu Sheng stepped forward, his hand naturally resting on the guy’s shoulder like they were close bros, but the words coming out of his mouth painted a completely different picture. “You guys are too loud.”

The delinquent holding the money turned his head and froze when he saw Xu Sheng.

To be fair, although Xu Sheng was notorious, relying purely on his face could still earn him plenty of double-takes at school.

Black T-shirt, dark blue jeans, and an earring.

Aside from this outfit that instantly marked him as an improper student, Xu Sheng’s features were refined yet sharp, the outer corners of his eyes tilting up slightly. He looked absent-minded, but there was still a trace of unconcealed wildness in his eyes. Anyone looking at him would think that this face clearly belonged to a bad boy who frequently had disciplinary notices posted on the bulletin board.

Most importantly, he looked even more like someone here to extort money than they did.

“You…” Oppressed by his aura, the delinquent holding the money felt inherently inferior. He choked on his words before saying, “Are you here to steal money too?”

Xu Sheng laughed. “You could understand it like that.”

Xu Sheng removed his hand from the guy’s shoulder, rolling his wrists to loosen them up, and asked casually, “How much have you cumulatively taken from him? Do you want to wait for me to make a move, or are you going to dig it out yourselves?”

Delinquents: “…”

Those four blonde punks were scared off.

They were originally only sixteen or seventeen years old anyway, coming out just to casually intimidate people and picking on the weak. Running into someone who looked even tougher than them, they didn’t dare to act arrogant anymore.

Caring about nothing else, they directly emptied whatever money they had in their pockets onto the floor, tossed out a “Sorry big bro, didn’t know this was your turf,” and bolted down the stairs.

Xu Sheng bent down, picked up the scattered money from the floor, stacked it neatly, and squatted down.

The guy wearing the Sixth High uniform was still sitting blankly on the ground, shivering. Seeing Xu Sheng squat down, his first reaction was: “I really don’t have any money left, I really don’t…” TAT.

Xu Sheng: “…”

Do I really look that much like a mugger?

Xu Sheng didn’t say anything. He simply shoved the stack of money into the guy’s hands, stood up, and walked back. As he pushed open the internet cafe door, he tossed out a single sentence: “Don’t come to this kind of place in the future.”

Xu Sheng stayed at the internet cafe until nearly nine o’clock before logging off.

It was already completely dark outside, and the streetlights on both sides of the road stretched out along the street.

The school gates locked at six-thirty. The dorm building stayed open until ten, but if you couldn’t get onto the campus, it wouldn’t matter even if it stayed open until dawn.

With practiced ease, Xu Sheng navigated his way to the back gate of the school.

The school’s back gate was right next to the dormitory buildings and was in a state of year-round closure, secured with a thick iron chain around the rusted iron doors. The entire wall perfectly encircled the boys’ dormitories. The building closest to the wall was the sophomore dorm, its orientation almost directly facing the back gate.

He stepped onto the rocks beneath the wall and vaulted himself up. The teenager was tall with long legs, so he climbed it effortlessly. His back bent, arching into a taut curve. He let go, dangling one leg down, just about to jump—

But then he saw someone walking over from the opposite direction.

The person was very tall, carrying a backpack slung over one shoulder, the cuffs of his uniform rolled up to reveal his wrists. Wearing that grayish-blue uniform—which had once ranked third from the bottom in the entire district’s uniform rankings—there was something indescribably different about him.

He was too far away to make out his features clearly, but when the person walked under the streetlight, Xu Sheng discovered an even more important problem.

He cursed in a low voice.

Fuck.

What great luck.

His flawless, airtight record of sneaking over the wall to get out of school had been ruined today.