"Waaah, what do we do? Are we going to be locked in here all night?"
"Jiang Xun, wake up. Jiang Xun..."
Through a haze, Jiang Xun heard intermittent sobbing. Someone seemed to be speaking tearfully beside his ear, but he couldn't make out the words.
Waves of pain throbbed through Jiang Xun's head, and his left ear buzzed. His nerves felt as though a pair of hands were pulling at them, while another pair kept shaking his shoulders.
It felt awful. He frowned irritably, snapped his eyes open, and shouted impatiently, "Stop making so much noise!"
Lin Jian's hands froze. Staring blankly at Jiang Xun's abruptly changed expression, he forgot to cry for a moment.
"Jiang... Jiang Xun, what's wrong?"
His head still hurt. Jiang Xun raised a hand to rub his temple. The voice reaching his ears sounded as though it were coming through a glass dome, muffled and indistinct.
The person speaking was crouched right beside his left side.
Jiang Xun touched his left ear with moderate pressure. It didn't hurt; there was only a faint, shrill buzzing that made him uncomfortable.
Sure enough, I can't hear anymore.
"Jiang Xun, are you... feeling unwell?"
He still couldn't hear clearly. Jiang Xun reined in his emotions and looked up at the speaker.
He was eighteen or nineteen, with fair skin and delicate features.
Tears brimmed in his dark eyes, their rims red. Teardrops still clung to his soft, pale face, making him look pitiful.
This had to be Lin Jian, the novel's bottom protagonist.
Jiang Xun glanced around at his surroundings. The space was small and square, with a toilet beside him.
A bathroom stall.
A stretch of the plot suddenly surfaced in his mind.
In the original novel, the bottom protagonist, Lin Jian, came from an ordinary family and was introverted and insecure. Just after starting his freshman year of college, he accidentally offended a rich-kid thug in his class, whose lackeys locked him in the bathroom of an abandoned teaching building after school.
The original owner of Jiang Xun's current body, also named Jiang Xun, was Lin Jian's only friend at this school.
As for why he had been locked in here too... he was an extra. Buy one, get one free.
"Jiang Xun, you look pale. Are you sick?"
The buzzing in his left ear gradually faded, leaving nothing but silence. Jiang Xun hadn't yet adjusted to being deaf in one ear.
He deliberately ignored Lin Jian's question and instinctively lowered his head to bite the knuckle of his index finger. Remembering that he was in a bathroom, he lowered his hand in disgust and wiped it on his trouser leg.
Only then did he look at the tearful Lin Jian crouching to his left and abruptly say, "Talk on my right side."
There was a faintly impatient, commanding edge to his tone, nothing like the way Jiang Xun usually spoke.
Lin Jian didn't think much of it. After a moment's hesitation, he moved to Jiang Xun's right, hugging his arms and pressing close against his shoulder as he murmured, "Jiang Xun, what do we do now?"
This time, Jiang Xun finally heard him clearly. He stood and pushed at the stall door, but it wouldn't budge.
He knew the top protagonist would soon arrive to rescue the bottom protagonist from the rich-kid thug and his lackeys, but it was better to rely on himself than on someone else.
Jiang Xun backed up two steps and stared at the tightly shut door, flicking his right foot to ready himself.
Lin Jian blinked and asked hesitantly, "Jiang Xun, what are you doing?"
"Kicking the door down. Stay back."
The words had barely left his mouth when Jiang Xun raised his right foot, power coiled in it, and kicked hard at the door.
Every move I make right now must look badass. Ridiculously cool.
But before the sole of his shoe could touch the door, someone suddenly opened it from outside.
Jiang Xun's kick met empty air. He stumbled and nearly fell.
He had only just steadied himself when a basin of cold water came pouring over his head, chilling him to the bone.
Another basin followed immediately, this time splashing Lin Jian, who stood to his right.
"Well, well, well. Look at these two poor drowned rats."
"One broke bastard and one country bumpkin. What a fucking eyesore. Hahahaha..."
The rich-kid thug stood in the doorway of the stall, clutching his stomach as he laughed with exaggerated gusto. Behind him, his three lackeys held empty basins and laughed along.
Lin Jian shrank back, water dripping from his soaked body. Tears once again gushed from his reddened eyes.
"Zou Ruicheng, I've never done anything to you. Why do you keep picking on me? If you keep this up... if you keep this up, I'll..."
"You'll what? Tell a teacher?"
The rich kid named Zou Ruicheng folded his arms, his mouth twisting into a cocky smirk at Lin Jian. "I just don't like you, and I'll bully you because I damn well want to. Always sniveling, you fucking pansy! You make me sick!"
"You... you're the pansy!"
At that moment, Jiang Xun, who had remained silent all this time, wiped his face and swept his overlong, forehead-plastered bangs back over his head. He stared fixedly at Zhou Ruicheng and his three lackeys, his back teeth clenched and his eyes fierce.
Jiang Xun's stare was impossible to ignore. Zhou Ruicheng turned his gaze toward him, his disgust plain to see.
"What the fuck are you looking at? You make me even sicker than that pansy Lin!"
The lackeys chimed in. "Yeah, exactly! Don't come out scaring people at night!"
"Hahaha..."
"You." Expressionless, Jiang Xun extended his index finger and pointed at Zhou Ruicheng, then at the lackeys behind him. "And you lot."
As he spoke, he picked up the mop in the corner of the stall with his free left hand and plunged it hard into the toilet several times.
"You bumpkin, what... what are you doing?!"
"What am I doing?" Jiang Xun lifted the mop, now soaked in toilet water, and smiled faintly. Then he swung it viciously at the people outside like a madman.
A little piss to drink, and you think you're hot shit. Mess with me, and you might not live to regret it!
A shit-covered mop-one jab, and you're dead!!
"Stay back! Stay the fuck back!!"
"Aaaah! Help!!!"