Forgiveness Over Hot Pot

The morning sunlight was like a layer of cold gauze draped over the windowsill. Gu Yue sat at the dining table, mechanically stirring the plain congee in her bowl with a spoon. Grains of rice rolled through the lukewarm liquid, yet failed to stir the slightest ripple in her eyes. Those eyes, usually as tranquil as deep pools, were now bloodshot, with dark circles beneath them so heavy it looked as though she had been punched twice.

Last night, when Xie Xie had been in front of his phone and a gaudy "beautiful girls dancing" pop-up had appeared on the screen with its piercing sound effects, he had actually had the gall to send it to her. She felt some string in her mind snap with a bang. It was not simple anger, but something deeper—the collapse of the very logic by which the world operated. The reason and order she had upheld, pursued, and taken pride in had shattered so completely before that idiot's obsessed expression as he sought applause for a few virtual gifts that not even scraps remained.

"Gu Yue, eat something." Tang Wulin's voice was soft, carrying obvious ingratiation. He picked up the fried egg in front of him, its edges lightly browned and its yolk still runny, then carefully placed it on the empty plate before her. He moved as cautiously as if defusing a bomb. The shadows beneath his eyes were no better than Gu Yue's. Clearly, he too had spent a sleepless night awaiting the coming "judgment."

Gu Yue did not move. Her gaze remained unfocused, as though it had passed through the bowl of congee before her and settled on some intangible, absurd point.

Across from her, Xie Xie kept his head lowered so far that he seemed eager to stuff his entire face into his bowl of congee. He rapidly poked at the bottom of the bowl with his chopsticks. Aside from faint tapping sounds, there was no other movement. He did not dare look at Gu Yue. Whenever he occasionally glanced up at her, he immediately withdrew his gaze as though electrocuted. His entire body had curled into itself, radiating an overwhelming air of guilt.

"Big Sister Gu Yue," Xu Xiaoyan edged closer, her voice soft and gentle as she tried to soothe this bomb that could explode at any moment. "Don't think about what happened last night. Nobody... nobody slept well. But the placement exam is coming up, and Fundamentals of Soul Tool Theory is a major subject! Pull yourself together, okay? Just treat it as coming with us to put this behind us, all right?"

Her words were like a small stone dropped into the stagnant pool of Gu Yue's heart, yet they did not raise even the faintest ripple. Gu Yue maintained that frozen posture, like an exquisite doll that had lost its soul.

Time crawled by thickly through the suffocating silence. Tang Wulin's attempts to ingratiate himself escalated from offering her a fried egg to peeling a tea egg for her, then warming milk for her. Xie Xie's guilty unease became restless fidgeting, until he simply picked up his bowl and pretended to be engaged in deep philosophical contemplation of the congee. Xu Xiaoyan's persuasion also gradually shifted from gentle reminders to an anxious tone.

This silent struggle continued until the noon sun stretched the window-frame shadows long across the floor. The room remained shrouded in gloomy, oppressive tension. Finally, Tang Wulin and Xie Xie seemed to reach some tragic agreement. They exchanged a look that held remorse, fear, and the determination to go all in.

The next second, both stood up at once, their synchronized movements almost comical, and deeply bowed toward Gu Yue.

"Gu Yue!" Tang Wulin's voice carried the earnestness of someone burning his bridges. "Trust us one more time! Just this once! I swear that from now on, my eyes will hold nothing but cultivation and knowledge! Those 'beautiful girl livestreams' are all illusory bubbles, traps set by capital to harvest suckers! We know we were wrong! We really know we were wrong!" He spoke at breakneck speed, as if reciting a heartrending letter of repentance.

Xie Xie lowered his head even further, his voice muffled as though he had a red-hot coal in his mouth. "That's right! Big Sister Gu Yue! We lost our heads, let lust cloud our minds! We'll never touch that stuff again! We'll even tell you our phone passwords! Please, give us one last chance! If we fail this exam, punish us however you want. We won't complain at all!"

The two of them were putting on a melodramatic spectacle that was practically a full prostration right there in the public cafeteria.

Gu Yue finally reacted. She slowly raised her eyes. The exhaustion in them had reached its limit, and the only light remaining was helplessness toward these two hopeless cases before her. Looking at their faces filled with "sincerity," the corner of her mouth twitched almost imperceptibly in response. Then, extremely slowly, she nodded.

"...One last time." Her voice was hoarse and dry, like sandpaper repeatedly scraping over rough wood.

"Yeah—!" After a brief deathly silence, the long-suppressed cheers nearly blew the roof off the building. Their immense joy was like floodwaters bursting through a dam, instantly washing away what little reason they had left. Tang Wulin's face flushed red with excitement as he reached out and snatched In-Depth Analysis of Basic Soul Tool Theory, which Gu Yue had been gripping so tightly that it was slightly warm, from her hand. Xie Xie cooperatively stretched out a foot and gave it what seemed like an accidental trip. The book traced an absurdly ironic arc through the air before landing with a plop directly in the trash can beside them.

"Oops! Sorry!" Tang Wulin grinned without a care, his face filled with the pure ecstasy of a survivor. "What the hell is the point of looking at that thing? You know every word, but put them together and it's all gibberish! Better not to read it at all!"

Xie Xie immediately chimed in, wearing the smug expression of someone who had seen through it all. "Exactly! Big Sister Gu Yue, don't fight with a few sheets of paper! Passing is what matters! We're so smart and quick-witted that we can pass with a little last-minute cramming! If we fail, then we all fail together! Nobody gets away! Come on, let's eat hot pot! You have to eat your fill before you have the strength to 'not study'!"

"You—!" Gu Yue looked at that sacred tome of knowledge being treated so lightly, then at the two faces glowing with liberation before her. A surge of fury, absurdity, and utter powerlessness rushed straight to her head. Her teeth itched with anger, and the knuckles of her clenched fists turned white. Yet before she could erupt, Tang Wulin and Xie Xie had already positioned themselves on either side of her. Like they were escorting a docile duck to slaughter, they half-pushed and half-dragged her up from her chair. Xu Xiaoyan hurriedly packed up her things and followed, a sly smile that seemed to see through everything on her face.

Thus, an extraordinary sight appeared on the campus's main road: a pale-faced girl with dark circles as heavy as a panda's, surrounded by three high-spirited people with light steps as they marched grandly toward the hot pot restaurant outside the school. Gu Yue struggled the entire way, making one final effort. Her words came fast and urgently, like a stream of gunfire.

"...The importance of an exam! Are your heads filled with nothing but Sichuan peppercorns and chili peppers?! This is a placement exam! It's a crucial battle for testing whether our soul tool theory foundation is solid! If the foundation is unstable, everything will collapse! Soul power cultivation can be built up over time, but if your theoretical foundation crumbles, how will you understand complex soul tool circuits later? How will you analyze core formations? How will you—"

"Got it, got it! Gu Yue," Tang Wulin called back loudly without turning around. He casually patted her back, the force neither too light nor too heavy, cutting off her words at precisely the right moment. "Theory is gray, but the tree of life is evergreen! This spicy red-oil broth is the most direct model of an energy-reaction furnace! Dipping tripe up and down seven times is the most exquisite experiment in controlling soul power vibration frequencies! Understanding this bite is more useful than chewing through ten pages of a book!"

"Exactly, exactly!" Xie Xie excitedly joined this carnival of crooked reasoning, pointing at the broth at the neighboring table, where chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns rolled in the boil. "See that? The rhythm of those bubbling currents looks just like an unstable soul power circuit seeking dynamic balance! Every slice of meat we cook today is accumulating the freshest, most direct combat data! Big Sister Gu Yue, you're wasting a precious pre-exam immersive learning opportunity!"

Xu Xiaoyan laughed so hard that her shoulders shook, then delivered the decisive blow. "Besides, you need to eat your fill before you can cram at the last minute! Once we get there, we'll split up and help you mark the key points! The efficiency will absolutely crush you studying alone!"

Gu Yue was left with a tightness in her chest by this absurd theory, which was somehow completely self-consistent within their own logic. She tried to reason with them, tried to bring up the brutal reality of soul master assessments, tried to describe the chain reaction that failing might trigger... Yet every word she said was like a snowflake cast into the rising heat of a hot pot, vanishing instantly without a trace. No one listened. Tang Wulin was animatedly confirming the "insane" level of spiciness for the extra-spicy broth with the server. Xie Xie was studying the dazzling assortment of meat platters on the menu. Xu Xiaoyan had already begun enthusiastically discussing whether they should order an extra serving of brown sugar glutinous rice cakes to offset the heat intense enough to burn away one's soul.

Every serious discussion about "the importance of an upcoming exam" was drowned out by the noisy ordering of tripe, duck blood, and shrimp paste. It was completely blurred, distorted, and finally dispersed by the hazy steam rising from the boiling red-oil broth, thick with the scent of beef tallow.

Gu Yue gave up completely. She pressed her colorless lips tightly together and swallowed every word of rebuttal. Silence was both the final calm before a storm and, after the world in her heart had collapsed only yesterday, her surrender beneath the forceful wash of reality's clamor. She simply closed her eyes, relaxed her entire body, and let herself sway with their steps.