Monthly exams

Sleeping at the desk was uncomfortable, so Xie Sui carried him to bed.

Asleep, Song Yu had none of his daytime swagger. His eyelashes drooped like little fans, and his breathing was soft. When he was picked up, he reacted a little in his half-awake state, struggling with his arms. But he was too sleepy, and vaguely sensing that it was Xie Sui, he hardly put any strength into it.

His breath brushed Xie Sui's arm, warm and soft.

He was so docile it made Xie Sui's heart itch.

Xie Sui leaned toward his ear, his lips almost touching that delicate skin, and asked with a low chuckle, "Sleeping here tonight, Yuyu?"

Dazed, Song Yu only sensed someone speaking beside his ear. He couldn't make out the words.

After studying so intensely for so long, his head was full of exams. He mumbled in his sleep, "...don't make the top hundred... kill you all..."

Once Xie Sui made out the words, he laughed softly.

This kid really was overbearing.

But he really was taking the monthly exams far too seriously, too.

After autumn arrived in Jing City, the nights grew cool.

Xie Sui carried him into his bedroom.

The boy's head sank into the soft pillow. His sleeping face was innocent and harmless, pure beyond belief.

Xie Sui bent down and lowered his head, his dark eyes unfathomable. ** and wicked thoughts were suppressed, leaving only a gentle smile on the surface.

He spoke softly.

"You trust me that much?"

But-he really wouldn't do anything to Song Yu.

In his previous life, Xie Sui had been aloof and abstinent, but he hadn't been ignorant. Living among City A's upper society, he had seen countless scenes of debauchery and intoxication. He simply hadn't wanted to play. If he did, he could naturally be wild and ruthless.

But those weren't things he wanted to bring to Song Yu.

A group of men had once pursued him with madness and passion. The looks they gave him were nakedly possessive and obsessive, their burning ** almost spilling out.

Their methods of pursuit were overbearing and deranged,

Everyone went crazy over him. The feeling was disgusting and boring.

How could his methods have been clean, when he had taken over the Xie Family at such a young age and become its new head? Relying on his father's meager guilt alone, he would probably have been devoured in the Xie Family long ago, without a bone left. The innocence and gentleness of his youth had shattered in the dead of night.

So later, even when three men joined forces to persecute him and trap him on an isolated island,

To Xie Sui, it had been like a farce that wasn't particularly funny.

On that desolate sea,

He had fired his gun, ending the joke with blood.

Was getting involved with three madmen unfortunate?

But that misfortune went both ways.

After all, in a sense, he was a madman too.

His condition was no less severe than theirs.

Outside, the rain was still falling, pattering softly and blurring the moonlight and lamplight. Quiet and beautiful, it called him back from those dark memories.

Summer nights in Jing City were still a little cool.

Under the dim light, Song Yu slept soundly. His features were delicate and gentle, his lips pressed together. It was hard to imagine that once he opened his eyes, he would be such a bright, handsome boy.

Like warm golden sunshine, or a mint-scented breeze in midsummer.

Xie Sui's eyes darkened. One look at him dispelled the gloom and hostility in his heart.

He covered him with the quilt and switched off the bedside lamp.

The room returned to darkness.

Amid the ceaseless rain outside the window, he smiled, bent down, and gently kissed the boy's forehead.

His voice was slightly hoarse.

"Good night, my Peter Pan."

Song Yu slept quite well.

For some reason, whenever it rained, this body of his grew especially mentally exhausted, leaving him listless about everything.

He slept until daylight. Luckily, it was Saturday, or he would have been late for class.

The bed was soft, with a very, very faint fragrance, but it wasn't the familiar scent of jasmine.

Before he came to school, Grandma Meng had packed him some homemade calming sachets scented with jasmine. He hung them by his bed and gradually grew used to the scent.

...this isn't my bedroom?

Song Yu sat up and rubbed his eyes, not fully awake yet.

The door handle turned, and someone pushed the door open.

Xie Sui looked fresh in a white T-shirt and black trousers. His tone was perfectly natural. "If you're awake, come out for breakfast."

Song Yu stared blankly at him, his light-colored eyes confused and their corners slightly red, looking freshly awake.

He hadn't figured out what was going on.

Xie Sui paused for a few seconds, watching him, then asked with a smile, "Got addicted to sleeping in my bed and refuse to get out?"

Song Yu: "..."

Now he understood.

He practically threw back the quilt and jumped out of bed. He put on his shoes and dashed into the bathroom, his mind refusing to settle.

Then he discovered that Xie Sui had already prepared a set of toiletries for him.

A towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, cup-everything was there.

With mixed feelings, he brushed his teeth, washed his face, and sat down at the table. Looking at the plain congee and fried dough sticks in front of him, Song Yu held his spoon and hesitated for a long time before asking outright, "So I fell asleep doing math problems yesterday? You were the one who carried me to bed?"

Xie Sui said mildly, "No. You were so well-behaved after falling asleep. You sleepwalked into bed yourself."

Song Yu: "..."

Knowing he had asked a stupid question, he ignored the sarcasm in Xie Sui's tone.

Song Yu swallowed a mouthful of congee and asked again, "Where did you sleep last night?"

"The couch."

"...did, did you sleep well?"

Xie Sui looked up and smiled. "Not very well. So how do you plan to make it up to me?"

Song Yu fell oddly silent, a little embarrassed. Then inspiration struck, and he came up with a fair and impartial idea.

"How about sleeping at my place tonight? I'll let you have my bed, and I'll sleep on the couch?"

How am I so smart? A thumbs-up for me.

Xie Sui looked at him with his pitch-black eyes for a long moment, then said, "Eat."

Having monopolized Xie Sui's bed yesterday and forced him onto the couch, Song Yu really felt guilty. He tried to make one more effort. "My bed's really soft and comfortable. I can let you sleep in it for a night. You really don't want to try?"

Xie Sui chuckled. "I don't want to sleep in your bed."

Rather wickedly, he added inwardly, I want to sleep with you. But Song Yu wouldn't know about these thoughts for a very long time.

Song Yu: "...oh."

With the monthly exams approaching, naturally, the weekend was for studying hard too.

Apart from Chinese composition, which he had been bad at in both lives, Song Yu felt somewhat confident about everything else.

The whole school was watching his study progress with their hearts in their throats.

Ma Xiaoding specifically created a four-person group chat.

He named it [Jingcheng No. 1 High School's Academic Ace Exchange Group]-entrusted by everyone in Class One to supervise Song Yu.

The monthly exams were on Monday.

On the weekend evening, Ma Xiaoding sent a frantic stream of messages.

[Sadako Never Forgets the Well Digger: Brother Yu, Brother Yu, how's the studying going?]

For once, Song Yu was modest.

[Your Husband Brother Yu: All right.]

Xi Bowen, however, raised a question,

[Extensive Learning and Retentive Memory: How all right is all right? Brother Yu, my middle school classmates are worried sick. They practically wish they could add their own total scores to yours.]

Ma Xiaoding scoffed.

[Sadako Never Forgets the Well Digger: I think Brother Yu definitely has the top hundred in the bag. No idea what they're so worried about. (picks nose)]

[Sadako Never Forgets the Well Digger: I've seen people on the forum calling for the top hundred to hand in blank papers and the top two hundred to take sick leave-whoa.]

Song Yu was thoroughly amused. If they really sent him into the top hundred that way, he had nothing to say. Though it wouldn't be an honorable victory, it was his classmates' goodwill, after all. Such kindness was hard to refuse, hard to refuse.

The exam room assignments came out, arranged according to high school entrance exam scores. Xie Sui, ranked first in the city, was the first seat in the first room. Since Song Yu had transferred in and had no score, he ended up in the last seat of the last room.

Looking at the seating chart, Ma Xiaoding sighed. "Brother Yu, there's quite a gap between you and God Xie. One right at the front, one right at the back."

Sitting in his seat with the soy milk straw between his teeth, Song Yu raised his eyebrows and grinned. "What gap? Next time we'll be in the same exam room."

He nudged his deskmate's chair with his hand.

"Right, Xie Sui?"

Xie Sui glanced at him and smiled. "Mm. However many blank papers you want me to hand in, I'll do it."

Ma Xiaoding and Xi Bowen couldn't stop laughing.

Song Yu angrily put his soy milk down on the desk. "You're filling in every single one! Who are you looking down on?"

The moment the bell rang to end evening self-study,

Everyone started heading to their exam rooms. Song Yu's classroom was in another building, in the most out-of-the-way room on the top floor. As soon as he entered, the first thing he saw was several delinquents with school uniforms scribbled all over and extremely long bangs. They sat close together, chewing betel nuts and slouching about.

Song Yu's seat was still the very last one.

He sat down and looked down to find his desk densely covered in cheat notes. Looking beside him, he found them on the wall too. But they had all been left from the previous exam and had nothing to do with his first-year monthly exams, so he wasn't worried about getting caught.

Still, Song Yu found them an eyesore and used an eraser to clean all the pencil marks off the desk. While he was diligently erasing, the person in front of him arrived: a very frail boy, short and extraordinarily skinny, wearing thick square glasses, with a schoolbag as heavy as a snail's shell.

His shoulders were hunched, and he was very ill at ease.

At a glance, he was the sort of quiet boy with little presence in class.

After finishing, Song Yu set his eraser aside. Since there was still time, he simply settled down to sleep.

But just as he began to feel sleepy, the screech of a moving chair rang out.

Someone was walking over, though that still didn't interfere with his sleeping.

"Hey, little classmate."

The tone was slovenly and not particularly friendly.

But the delinquent wasn't speaking to Song Yu. He was speaking to the boy in front of him.

"Help a brother out during the exam, huh? Looks like your grades should be pretty good. Classmates should help each other, right?"

For the first monthly exams, those seated near the back were mostly transfer students, not necessarily poor students.

The boy with glasses froze, his face reddening as he said awkwardly, "My grades are bad too. I, I don't dare pass notes."

The delinquent pushed further, picking up his schoolbag and hefting it twice. "Whoa, this heavy, and you say you're no good at studying? Unless you've got something shameful in here?"

Frightened and angry, the boy with glasses tried to snatch it back, but someone held his head down so he couldn't move any farther. The delinquent stepped back, opened the bag, turned it upside down, and dumped everything straight onto the floor. Books fell in a clatter, followed by a water bottle, keys, and a pencil case.

His face was full of mockery as he sneered while emptying it. "Good students really are different from us."

When he finished, he casually planted a foot on a book.

The delinquent tossed the schoolbag to the boy with glasses, whose eyes were burning with anger, and said, half threatening, half mocking, "How old are you, still scared of exams? Making such a fuss over passing a note. If I don't get one, don't even think about taking the next exam."

The boy with glasses trembled all over with anger, tears welling in his eyes. "You, you-you've gone too far."

Smugly, the delinquent sat on the desk and thumped his feet down heavily on Song Yu's desk, utterly arrogant. "I've gone too far? Tell the teacher, then. See who ends up suffering."

Sleeping restlessly, Song Yu was finally jolted awake by a loud bang beside his ear.

Author's note: I stopped here because I'd just hit three thousand words and happened to be sleepy. Not because a trashy little delinquent like this deserves to be my cliffhanger. (covers face)

Has Jinjiang's comment section turned into something like Moments now? You can whisper things to me.

Thank you to the little angels who cast Overlord Tickets or watered me with nutrient solution~

Thanks to the little angels who threw [Grenades]: Green Fox, One Person After Another, Scattered, hehe, 1 each;

Thanks to the little angels who threw [Land Mines]: Ah Jiu, 5; Shu Nian, Zero Point Breakthrough, Xilin Jue, Surely a Heavenly Immortal Drunk with Abandon, Flute Lament and Clear Xiao, Three-Day Crane, Langfeng, Black Rice, Shuli Pukou, Twilight, Mao Qi, Little Monk Doesn't Act Cute, muamua_ua, It's Gu Yan Zhu, Nine Seven Eight, lQinqCuan Nine, The Other Shore · River of Oblivion, I Love Sa'e, Xuan, Ah Wuwuwuwuwuwu, 1 each;

Thanks to the little angels who watered me with [Nutrient Solution]:

Red Rabbit in Love with Carrots, 63 bottles; regina, 32 bottles; Chenchen, 22 bottles; real_pcy, Get Up in Winter and Blow Up the School, Little Monk Doesn't Act Cute, 20 bottles each; She Has Long Dwelt Among Mountains and Marshes, Ganggang, Hanjiang, Clouds Unfurl and Rest, 123, Ning Liang, Brocade Night Walk, Soft Words and Gentle Speech, 10 bottles each; Ice Ink's Soft Words, 36478147, 7 bottles each; The Master Does Not Speak, 26099134, 6 bottles each; 34261581, Life Needs Sugar, Sakurai Momoko, I'm from Northern China, Yingzhi, A Catless Owner Dreaming of Cats, Jia Lili, 5 bottles each; Little Fangirl, 4 bottles; Xilin Jue, encounter_07, 3 bottles each; Whatever, A Poor Person in Chang'an, Curled a Curl, Spiritual Opium, ayl, 2 bottles each; Lan Wangji's Xianxian, Xinxin Cutie, Su Qing_, Lu Ci, I'd Better Change My Name~, Super Sweet Again Today, alskdwyc, Meow Meow Meow?, Maple Mist, Starry Night, Jiajia, Red Pandas Aren't Small Pandas, Akirina, Tender Green~Meow, Ino, 1 bottle each;

Thank you all so much for your support. I'll keep working hard!