After arguing with people on the forum, Song Yu decisively switched off his phone and stopped bothering with all the drama.
His work done, he swept away, concealing his achievements and fame.
He was still stuck on that question in the reading comprehension passage from class, unsure whether to choose B or D.
After thinking for a while, he put down his pen. Why agonize over it? Didn't he have a top student living downstairs?
At that thought, Song Yu gathered up his pen and test paper and ran downstairs.
Inside his room, Xie Sui was taking a call.
The boy sat in a chair, tapping the desk with his fingers, his tone casual. "Give the footage to the police. As for the photos and medical report, why send them to me? Send them to his family."
The person on the other end said something else.
Xie Sui lowered his eyes, listened expressionlessly, and hung up.
An urgent knock sounded at the door.
Xie Sui could guess who it was without even trying. He lifted his eyes indifferently toward the door. This kid wasn't sleeping at noon-was he planning to sleep through three classes straight that afternoon?
After knocking for ages, Song Yu finally got Xie Sui to open the door. His head was full of the words "neutral" and "criticize."
His eyes lit up when he saw Xie Sui open the door.
Then he met those dark, cool eyes and froze for a moment before saying bluntly, "I'm here to study with you."
Xie Sui held the doorknob, the corners of his lips lifting.
"If it's math, let's not."
Song Yu said, "...English. Let me come in and sit down first. It's boiling."
Xie Sui felt he really did have endless patience for Song Yu.
Who else in his previous life would have dared speak to him like that?
His reputation for coldness and ruthlessness had spread far and wide. Countless socialites flocked to him, yet none dared set foot in his private territory.
Xie Sui let him in and said flatly,
"Don't ask me about words you can look up in a dictionary."
Song Yu: "..."
Fuck, then all I need is my phone. What use are you?
The rooms in the teachers' apartments all had similar layouts. Song Yu sat on the living room sofa to do his homework.
Xie Sui didn't go into the bedroom either. He stayed beside him reading, keeping him company.
Doing homework alone felt completely different from doing it with someone else.
At any rate, with Xie Sui beside him, Song Yu slacked off less often.
After finishing two questions, Song Yu checked the answers. A fifty percent accuracy rate!
He could do this well after so long without touching an English test paper. He really was a genius.
He mentally gave himself a like.
The top hundred in his year at Jingcheng No. 1 High School was within reach. In a cheerful mood, Song Yu picked up the water on the table and took a sip, then looked toward Xie Sui, rather curious. "How come every time I see you, you're either sleeping in class or playing on your phone afterward? You don't put any effort into studying."
Xie Sui turned a page, his tone calm. "Probably because high school coursework isn't worth my attention."
Song Yu gulped down some water and set the glass down heavily.
"Oh."
Hah. Look at you, so impressive.
With the fury of a poor student, Song Yu plunged back into the sea of English.
The final question in a cloze passage.
Song Yu was stuck on one word for ages.
It was the kind that looked as familiar as could be.
You knew perfectly well that you recognized it, that you could remember it without relying on your phone, but your mind just went blank for the moment.
Xie Sui checked the time. "Class is about to start."
Song Yu didn't look up. "Wait, I've only got one question left. Don't interrupt. I'll have it in a second."
Xie Sui raised an eyebrow but didn't hurry him. He put away his book and went to pour him a glass of water.
Despite that promise of "a second," five minutes passed without Song Yu moving his pen. His brows were tightly knitted in that familiar, teeth-gritted determination to fight it out.
This kid always treated questions like battles.
Xie Sui walked over and was just about to put down the water.
Then he heard Song Yu finally give up and say listlessly, "Husband."
Xie Sui froze.
He failed to set the glass down steadily, splashing water onto his fingertips.
Song Yu gritted his teeth. "Do you remember what 'husband' means? I'm sure I know it, but I just can't remember."
Xie Sui paused for a few seconds, then suddenly chuckled. "What? I didn't catch that. Say it again."
The question was driving Song Yu mad. "Husband. Was that clear? What does it mean?"
Xie Sui smiled. "Slower."
"Husband! H, U, S, B, A, N, D!"
Finally reining in his mischievous streak, Xie Sui stopped teasing him.
He sat down beside Song Yu and pulled over the workbook.
"Let me see the question."
Song Yu was stunned. Furious, he slapped the table. "The meaning! I want you to tell me the meaning!"
Xie Sui took his pen and pointed at the question, ignoring his impotent rage.
"'Husband' means a male spouse, the man you're married to. But here, Mrs. Green is addressing her lover, so it wouldn't be that formal. That's why you should choose C, 'darling.'"
He tilted his head and smiled at Song Yu, his voice low and lovely.
"Darling."
Darling.
Xie Sui's voice tended toward cool clarity, but that word held a smile and tenderness that made one's scalp tingle.
But Song Yu was simply too straight. His only reaction was bewildered anger. "So 'husband,' the word I just wasted all that time trying to remember, wasn't even the right answer?"
"..."
Xie Sui gave him a long look and put down the pen.
His tone was icy. "That's right."
*Should've just made him look it up in the dictionary :)*
Just as Xie Sui had predicted, Song Yu slept straight through an entire Chinese class that afternoon.
September already made people drowsy. The moment the Chinese teacher started reading the text, Song Yu felt his eyelids fighting to close.
The Chinese teacher was a sentimental middle-aged man. He recited poetry with deep feeling, even waving his hands along. "Here with a hundred companions I once roamed; those crowded, momentous years return to mind. Young we were, schoolmates, in the full flower of life..." But his cadence was too slow. By the end, Song Yu's head was almost hitting the desk.
Thump. The slight pain woke him for an instant.
Having established his own top-student persona, Song Yu was terribly burdened by his image.
He shook his head and tugged Xie Sui's sleeve. "Pinch me. Don't let me sleep. I want to listen."
With that, he held out his arm.
He wore short sleeves in summer. His exposed arm was pale and soft, clearly the result of years of pampering.
Who knew where that strength came from when he hit people?
Xie Sui glanced down and said indifferently, "Pinch yourself."
Song Yu blinked stupidly, then offered a genius suggestion. "I can't bring myself to pinch hard. Why don't you hold out your arm and let me pinch you?"
Xie Sui laughed in exasperation.
Pinching someone else's arm to wake himself up when he was sleepy. How clever of him.
"In your dreams."
They were becoming increasingly casual with each other, and Song Yu hadn't noticed anything wrong. Knowing he was in the wrong, he could only seek another solution. He turned to Ma Xiaoding, who was particularly enthusiastic in Chinese class. "Quick, pinch me. I'm falling asleep."
Ma Xiaoding was immersed in the sea of poetry. Caught off guard, he didn't understand. "Brother Yu, what do you want me to do?"
Xie Sui had already grabbed Song Yu's hand and pulled him back.
"Sleep. I'll wake you when he gets to the important parts."
Song Yu's eyes widened. Tears of sleepiness made them look especially clear and bewildered.
"Come on, that's not very appropriate, is it? I'm a man who's going to study and get full marks."
Yet his tone was still just as provoking.
Xie Sui said, "Next period is physics. If you don't sleep now, will you sleep then?"
Physics and Chinese.
Miss one lesson in the former, and you might be clueless for three years.
After weighing them up, Song Yu obediently shut his mouth, lay down on the desk, and went to sleep.
Their spot was practically the VIP poor-student zone: by the window, with the breeze as a sedative and the teacher's voice as a lullaby. Before long, Song Yu was sound asleep.
In fact, this area had been receiving plenty of attention.
The forum thread arguing over Brother Yu's real identity had raged for ages, but without a word from the person himself, it couldn't really blow up.
The trolls unanimously believed that Yu Whatever was an ugly, short loser who loved running his mouth in real life. There was no way he could be Song Yu. Those fujoshis had simply lost their minds and were shipping random people together.
The girls split into two camps. Xie Sui's girlfriend fans still made up the majority on the forum. Hearing that they were deskmates made them furious enough to spit blood, and they adamantly refused to believe it. There was no way those two were involved!
The remaining shippers were living in bliss, piling up replies at lightning speed as if it were New Year's.
Their behavior on the forum was as infuriating as banging gongs and drums outside someone else's funeral.
Take one brilliant thread poster's analysis, for instance.
"Fuck! I'm so happy! Song Yu, SY. Xie Sui, XS. Both their initials have an S. What does that mean? It means they're real! And the remaining XY-does that sound familiar? The inseparable X and Y axes running through our math textbooks. What does that mean? It means no matter how long their future is, they'll always share an origin. A match made in heaven. Still don't get it?"
Everyone else.
"..."
"...Awesome."
"6666666666"
"You really can fucking spin anything into something."
"'Still don't get it?' Hahahahahahaha, I get it, I get it."
Of course, however wildly they celebrated on the forum, that was only online.
In real life, even the girls in Class One who were convinced that Song Yu was Brother Yu didn't dare say much.
After all, Song Yu's scumbag aura of taking on everyone and everything on the forum was too obvious. He seemed so wild, domineering, and arrogant. They were scared.
Until the truth came out, they chose to watch quietly.
But the more they watched, the more they felt that these two being deskmates really was arranged by heaven.
The first physics lesson of high school.
Song Yu brought a hundred and twenty percent of his energy to it, sitting straight-backed, refreshed and alert.
Xie Sui, however, opened his physics textbook and turned his head. "I'll take a nap first. Tap my desk and wake me up for PE next period."
Song Yu said, "??? You're sleeping even in physics!"
Xie Sui hummed in assent.
Song Yu was shocked. "Did you go to bed really late yesterday?"
Xie Sui smiled. "Not too late."
The matter of Zhu Zhixing's family hadn't taken much of his energy. He had paid some extra attention to the Wang Family.
Song Yu felt no remorse for sleeping through an entire Chinese lesson himself, yet he had endless lectures for everyone else. "This won't do. Let me tell you, with a subject like physics, if you sleep through the first lesson, you'll never understand anything after it. Do you know how many people fall to physics every year? Hey."
Xie Sui ignored him.
He lay down on the desk and closed his eyes.
His thick, long lashes lowered.
With his eyes closed, Xie Sui lost that compelling, mysterious presence and looked tired and vulnerable.
Looking at his sleeping face, Song Yu paused and stopped running his mouth. He muttered quietly, "How can you sleep so much?"
Not yet asleep, Xie Sui heard him. His lashes quivered slightly, and he felt amused.
He wasn't actually someone who loved sleeping. Quite the opposite: in his previous life, insomnia had become a habit. For a long stretch, he had closed his eyes for only two or three hours a day. He had also slept very lightly, waking at the slightest sound.
Yet after returning to fifteen, he discovered that with Song Yu beside him, he could always sleep peacefully.
How miraculous.
Wang Ci hadn't come to class all day, which was good news to Song Yu. Just the idiotic things Wang Ci had done to Xie Sui in the original novel were enough to disgust him to death.
The last period was PE.
Song Yu tidied his things, dug out his phone, and prepared to head to class.
Beep.
A message from a stranger appeared on his phone.
Malice filled every word.
[Do you think that if all that stuff about Xie Sui's mother came out, so many people would still worship him and call him God Xie? The son of a □□.]
[If I can't have something I want, I'll destroy it before I let anyone else have it. You want to fight me? I'll destroy everything he has and drag him into hell. Let's see who he begs then.]
Song Yu read it, his eyes full of coldness, his smile equally icy.
He had been wrong.
Idiots were everywhere.
Song Yu sent him a reply.
[Bring it on.]
[Let's see who destroys whom in the end :)]
Author's note: Thank you to the little angels who sent me Overlord Tickets or watered me with nutrient solution~
Thanks to the little angels who sent [Rocket Launchers]: Shuiyuan Shanyao, 2; lQinq Cuanjiu and Huaye v5, 1 each;
Thanks to the little angel who sent [Grenades]: Nana nei, 1;
Thanks to the little angels who sent [Landmines]: Jinfeng, 8; Gunian, 2; Liang Quezhi, Juli, Conic Sections Winding Nine Times, Zhijiao Yi Zhaozhao, Chenwei, White-Robed Minister, It's Gu Yan Dian, Youshu, Oishi Na, Purple Ice Lotus:, Century Egg and Pork Congee, and 39040447, 1 each;
Thanks to the little angels who watered me with [Nutrient Solution]:
Please Slowly Go and Meimei, 80 bottles each; Luoyu, 79; Jiujian, 70; Nine Foxes Cutting Immortal Grass, 54; Jujujujujuran, 34; Youshu, 32; Jun and Canglan, 30 each; Marriage Certificate, Sweet Utility Pole, and A Thousand Cups in One Drink, 20 each; Huaye v5, 19; Yun Manshu, 17; Mo Ximo, 15; Nana nei, Yuji Yige, Little Charmander with Internal Heat, Pick Up the Fallen Chestnut, Lu Asheng, Shadow Dreams of a Floating Life, Did You Sleep Early Today, Lingering Ties, Sansan-chan, and Su Asong, 10 each; Li Jiushu, predestined Wangxian, and Ketchup, 9 each; Chenwei and encounter_07, 7 each; Zhonggui, 6; Meg Thomas, Yiyi, Fishy, and Deep Words Shallow Feelings, 5 each; Linli, Repeated Sideways Hops, and Strawberry Bubbles, 3 each; Juli and Liuyi, 2 each; Yanjiang, Listening, 31322075, Qingguang＿Fei, Luye, Luoluo, Civil Affairs Bureau, Dream Chaser, A Little Dumpling, Tuo, and Somewhere Deep in the Clouds, 1 each;
Thank you all so much for your support. I'll keep working hard!