Chapter 21

Soon, Zhou Zifu appeared before them.

Zhou Zifu looked anxious. Puzzled, Lu Zhaobei asked, "What happened..."

"Zhaobei!" Zhou Zifu rushed up to Lu Zhaobei, his worried gaze sweeping over him from head to toe. Lu Zhaobei hadn't answered his call, and remembering how Qi Yue had treated Atas, the Class A exchange student, in Cafeteria F, Zhou Zifu had panicked and run straight to Qi Yue's dorm.

"Wh—"

Zhou Zifu saw only Lu Zhaobei outside the door, not Qi Yue standing out of sight inside the doorway. He blurted out, "Zhaobei, are you all right? Did Qi Yue bully..."

"Wait, Big Zhou!" Lu Zhaobei belatedly clapped a hand over Zhou Zifu's mouth, but it was too late. He looked apologetically over his shoulder. He didn't understand why Big Zhou thought Qi Yue had bullied him.

Qi Yue, who had planned to politely see the manhua protagonist off, heard what one of the red-haired twins said, and a question mark slowly appeared in his mind.

Qi Yue: "...?"

Was that polite?

Chapter 21

They were the protagonist group, the kind of protagonist group that brought misfortune to anyone who crossed them. Wasn't he, Qi Yue, the weak, pitiful, and helpless one?!

All right, he admitted it. To maintain his persona, he had acted a tiny bit strong when appearing before everyone. But that was only to keep them at a distance. Not long ago, he had put on a somewhat cold attitude because he hadn't known the person before him was Lu Zhaobei, the manhua protagonist, but... surely that didn't count as "bullying."

More importantly, he swore he had never acted strong toward the red-haired twins. When they first met, he had even smiled to show goodwill. What gave the red-haired twins reason to think he had "bullied" the protagonist?

To this day, Qi Yue still couldn't let go of the +6% hatred value from the red-haired twins.

Qi Yue's aggrieved gaze fell on Zhou Zifu, who stood more than a meter away with Lu Zhaobei's hand over his mouth.

"Hmm?" Qi Yue raised an eyebrow slightly, expressing just the right amount of puzzlement. The faint smile he had worn while seeing the protagonist Lu Zhaobei off still lingered on his face.

He had so many questions, yet for the sake of his persona, he could only restrain his emotions. Who understood the bitterness and grievance in his heart?

So please, hurry up and tell him the answer. Why did they think he would bully the manhua protagonist?

With Lu Zhaobei covering Zhou Zifu's mouth and looking nervously behind him, it was hard for Zhou Zifu not to notice. He followed Lu Zhaobei's gaze and saw the tall, slender Qi Yue standing just inside the dorm doorway.

When Zhou Zifu suddenly met Qi Yue's eyes, he realized Qi Yue had heard what he'd just said, and the color instantly drained from his face.

Although Qi Yue was smiling at him,

the smile clearly didn't reach his eyes.

Zhou Zifu was on full alert, his body drawn taut in an obvious defensive posture. He felt the atmosphere grow colder as the warmth faded from Qi Yue's red eyes.

With his hand over Zhou Zifu's mouth, Lu Zhaobei was touching him. He could naturally feel Zhou Zifu's body stiffen when he heard Qi Yue's voice and met his gaze.

Big Zhou was afraid.

Why?

Had they met before? Lu Zhaobei wondered.

Whatever the reason, the situation was that Big Zhou's "rash and impolite" words had been overheard by the person himself. Whether as Big Zhou's friend or as someone maintaining a superficially harmonious relationship with Qi Yue, he had to resolve the issue.

"Big Zhou must have misunderstood something." Lu Zhaobei took his hand away from Zhou Zifu's mouth.

He turned to Qi Yue, gave a solemn explanation, and bowed to him. "I'm truly sorry, Qi Yue."

Lu Zhaobei was only apologizing; he didn't mean to ask Qi Yue for forgiveness. Judging by how Qi Yue treated Beixing and the other Class F students, Qi Yue had his own standards.

And a simple apology couldn't dispel hard feelings.

"...It's all right." The person who should have answered his question hadn't spoken, while the person who shouldn't have spoken had. Without the answer he wanted, Qi Yue had no choice but to turn his gaze from Zhou Zifu to Lu Zhaobei, the manhua protagonist who had addressed him.

When the manhua protagonist spoke, he had better respond. After all... he was a character who possessed that magical thing called protagonist halo. He absolutely couldn't afford to offend him.

Still... Zhou Zifu had slandered him out of some inexplicable concern for Lu Zhaobei, and Lu Zhaobei, aware of that fact, had been the first to apologize. As a friend, Lu Zhaobei truly was willing to take responsibility.

"Thank you." Lu Zhaobei thanked Qi Yue for his magnanimity.

Phew...

Those cold, sharp red eyes had finally turned away from him. Zhou Zifu secretly breathed a sigh of relief. If Zhaobei hadn't spoken up, he could hardly have held out under Qi Yue's scrutinizing gaze.

Before Zhou Zifu could finish letting out that breath, Qi Yue's gaze returned to him.

"You're welcome." Qi Yue looked at Zhou Zifu.

He smiled. "You... Zhou Zifu. Don't you have anything to say to me?"

Qi Yue adopted as kind and friendly an attitude as he could.

Although the manhua protagonist had apologized on behalf of a member of the protagonist group, Qi Yue still couldn't help minding the slanderous claim that he had bullied someone.

He still wanted to know why, and whether it had anything to do with the "inexplicable +6% hatred value."

"..." Zhou Zifu swallowed nervously twice.

Qi Yue's smile was so creepy. It was as if, should Zhou Zifu fail to satisfy him, he would turn hostile in the blink of an eye, just as he had with Atas. Clearly... Qi Yue clearly knew why he had said "bully"!

Whether it was how Qi Yue had appeared before the two brothers provocatively when he first transferred, or how they had later lost money selling information about him, Qi Yue knew all about it. Under the circumstances, Qi Yue was deliberately pressing him for answers in front of Lu Zhaobei. He was deliberately forcing him to reveal what he had kept from Zhaobei all this time.

Lu Zhaobei: "..." Sure enough, it was just as he'd thought. Someone like Qi Yue wouldn't let it go over a simple apology.

Lu Zhaobei looked at Zhou Zifu with a serious expression. "Big Zhou, I want to know why you said that too."

Zhou Zifu: "..."

Lu Zhaobei, the person the two brothers cared about most, had asked him personally. Qi Yue had achieved his goal.

Zhou Zifu was afraid of Qi Yue's oppressive gaze, and he couldn't refuse Lu Zhaobei either.

"About..." Zhou Zifu swallowed nervously and looked at Qi Yue. "How we sold information about you before." Although they had ended up losing money, the fact remained that they had tried to profit from information about Qi Yue.

He had finally said it.

Damn Qi Yue. They had already stopped selling any information about "Qi Yue," yet he still wouldn't let them go. He had even insisted on making Zhou Zifu confess in front of Lu Zhaobei, the person he cared about most.

"I'm sorry." Zhou Zifu lowered his head and apologized, then gritted his teeth and muttered unwillingly, "But you know, there were a lot of 'unknowns.' We didn't earn anything and even lost some money..."

Phew... Let this be the end of it. Please.

"Was that the incident where you lost a lot of money?!" As an artificial ability user, Lu Zhaobei had taken time off and stayed in his dorm during that period because of the rejection between his ability and his body. By the time he returned to class, he had heard classmates gossiping that the red-haired twins had lost a lot of money because of a Class F student. He hadn't expected that person to be Qi Yue.

"...Yes." Zhou Zifu's voice was very quiet.

Selling... information about him?!

Qi Yue: "..."

Sure enough, in front of ability users, he, Qi Yue, was the weak, pitiful, and helpless one. He had already hidden himself away in Class F, yet he still couldn't stop information about him from being sold.

Still...

"That's right." Qi Yue shrugged, his expression natural. The information the panel had provided him really did contain a whole lot of "unknowns."

Zhou Zifu: "..."

Qi Yue really did know everything! Just because he had blurted out the word "bully," he had brought Qi Yue's ruthless retaliation down on himself.

"After that... we already decided not to sell any more information about you." Their lack of money to pay compensation was one thing, but Qi Yue's warning in deliberately making the crystal ball explode was the real reason they had stopped. Now there was another reason: Qi Yue held a grudge over the slightest offense.

Qi Yue: "!"

"A very good decision." The corners of Qi Yue's mouth were harder to suppress than an AK.

Qi Yue was one hundred percent sincere in that assessment. Fortunately, that hair-raising practice had stopped. The twin know-it-alls of the manhua's protagonist group truly lived up to their reputation: they had sold information about him as soon as he arrived in this world. Luckily, the sales didn't seem to have gone very well. They had even lost money, so people really weren't all that interested in him.

No wonder the red-haired twins' hatred value toward him had risen by 6%. He, too, would secretly resent anyone who caused him to lose money on a deal. It wasn't entirely unreasonable for the twins to think he had "bullied" them.

In any case, the truth had finally come out.

No one understood the fear of "losing money" better than Qi Yue, who was flat broke and had accidentally made the school's ability-testing crystal ball explode in his hands.

But there was nothing he could do about that "unknown" information. He didn't know what it was himself.

Watching the corners of Qi Yue's mouth rise noticeably after he had been forced to confess those things in front of Lu Zhaobei, Zhou Zifu thought, "..."

A 'good decision,' indeed. If that wasn't sarcastic mockery, I'll wash my hair standing on my head.

If anyone ever circulated information about Qi Yue again, he felt it was absolutely necessary to sneak a sentence onto the information page:

"Don't try to provoke Qi Yue. He always repays a grudge."

Clearly, Lu Zhaobei seemed to have something to discuss with Zhou Zifu, so Qi Yue naturally couldn't be a third wheel. Relieved now that he knew the truth, he had no interest in inserting himself between the protagonist and his friend any longer. He considerately said, "You two, make yourselves comfortable?"

"...Mm." After adding fuel to the fire, he left as though nothing had happened, leaving Zhou Zifu to clean up the "mess" alone.

Qi Yue was truly a terrifying devil. Looking at Lu Zhaobei's expression, Zhou Zifu's heart pounded.