Chapter 44 – Monthly Examination

It was uncomfortable sleeping at the desk. Xie Sui carried him over to the bed.

The sleeping Song Yu didn’t have the same wanton flashiness he had during the day. His eyelashes hung down like small fans, his breathing light. He was half asleep and half awake when Xie Sui picked him up and reacted a little, his arm struggling slightly. But he was too sleepy and didn’t use much force after vaguely sensing that it was Xie Sui.

His breathing fanned out against his arm, hot and soft.

He was so well behaved that it made his heart itch.

Xie Sui leaned in close to his ears, his lips almost touching that stretch of delicate skin. He was smiling as he whispered, “Yuyu, are you sleeping here tonight?”

Song Yu was confused and dazed. He could only tell that someone was speaking into his ear, but he couldn’t hear them clearly.

He’d studied so hard and for such a long time that his mind was filled with exams. He said sleepily, “… If I don’t get into the top hundred… I’ll kill you all…”

Xie Sui chuckled after he heard him clearly.

This child was really overbearing.

But he was really too invested in this monthly exam.

The nights turned cool after Jing City entered autumn.

Xie Sui carried Song Yu into his bedroom.

The teenager’s head was buried in the soft pillow, his sleeping face clean and harmless, so pure that it was deadly.

Xie Sui bent over and bowed his head, his dark eyes unfathomable. He suppressed his desire and wicked intentions, only his gentle smile drifting over the surface of his expression. 

He spoke softly.

“You trust me so much?”

However—he really wouldn’t do anything to Song Yu.

Xie Sui had been cold and abstinent in his previous life, but it didn’t mean that he didn’t understand anything. Living in A City’s upper-class society meant that he’d seen endless debauchery and rotten things. It was just that he didn’t want to play; if he did, it naturally would be crazy and wild.

But he didn’t want to bring those things to Song Yu.

He’d been madly pursued by a group of men before. Those people had looked at him with naked possessiveness and paranoia, their scorching, smothering lust practically flowing out.

That way of pursuit was domineering and insane.

Everyone was crazy for him. That kind of feeling was both disgusting and boring.

For him to be able to take over the Xie Family at a young age and become its new leader, how could his means be clean? If he’d relied only on his father’s meager guilt to survive, he’d have been eaten up by the Xie Family until not even his bones were left. The clean softness of youth had been crushed into nothing by the deep night.

So, after that, even when three men had joined forces to persecute him and had trapped him on an isolated island—

For Xie Sui, it had been like a farce that wasn’t funny.

On the barren sea.

He’d shot a gun and ended this joke with blood.

Was it very unfortunate that he’d gotten involved with three madmen?

This misfortune had been mutual.

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

And his symptoms were more serious than theirs.

It was still raining outside, the droplets pattering continuously as they fell. They blurred the moonlight, the scene quiet and beautiful, calling him back from his gray memories.

Late summer nights in Jing City were still a little cold.

Song Yu slept soundly in the dim light. His features were delicate and soft, his lips pursed, and it was difficult to imagine that he would be such a bright and handsome young man when he opened his eyes.

Like the warm, golden sunshine; like a peppermint-scented midsummer breeze.

Xie Sui’s eyes darkened. The gloomy and fierce aura that surrounded him scattered after one look at Song Yu.

He covered him with a blanket and turned off the lamp.

The room fell into darkness.

Amidst the constant rain outside the window, he smiled slightly, bent over, and kissed the teenager’s forehead.

His voice was a little hoarse.

“Good night, my Peter Pan.”

*

Song Yu slept very well that night.

He didn’t know why, but his body was always very tense and tired when it rained. Everything made him feel weak and groggy.

This sleep lasted until the sky grew bright. Fortunately, it was Saturday, or else he would’ve been late for class.

The bed was very soft and carried a special, light fragrance, but it wasn’t the familiar scent of jasmine.

Grandma Meng had put some homemade, jasmine-filled incense sachets with his things before he’d come to school. He’d hung them up by the bed and gotten used to the scent as time went by.

… He wasn’t in his own bedroom?

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

The door handle turned. Someone was already pushing the door open and coming inside.

Xie Sui looked fresh, wearing a white shirt and black trousers. His tone was very natural, “Come out for breakfast if you’re awake.”

Song Yu looked at him in a daze. His light-colored pupils were confused, the corners of his eyes slightly red. He looked like he’d just woken up.

And hadn’t figured out what was going on.

Xie Sui paused for a few seconds and looked at him. He laughed, “Are you addicted to sleeping in my bed and refusing to come down?”

Song Yu: “……”

He’d figured out what was going on.

His mind still hadn’t been able to calm down by the time he’d lifted up the quilt, practically jumped out of bed, put on his shoes, and ran swiftly to the toilet.

It turned out that Xie Sui had prepared a set of toiletries for him.

Towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, cup—it was all there.

After brushing his teeth and washing his face, he sat down at the table and looked at the congee and fried dough sticks in front of him. Song Yu picked up a spoon, hesitating for a long time before asking directly, “So did I fall asleep while doing math questions yesterday? Were you the one who brought me to bed?”

Xie Sui said lightly, “No, you were really well-behaved after you fell asleep and sleepwalked to the bed on your own.”

Song Yu: “……”

Knowing that he’d asked a stupid question, he ignored the irony in his tone.

Song Yu ate a mouthful of congee and continued asking, “Where did you sleep yesterday?”

“The sofa.”

“… How, how was your sleep?”

Xie Sui lifted his gaze and started laughing, “Not very good. How do you want to compensate me for it?”

Song Yu fell strangely silent for a moment. He felt a bit embarrassed, but he soon had an epiphany and came up with a very fair suggestion.

“How about you come to my place to sleep tonight? You can sleep on my bed, and I’ll sleep on the sofa?”

Why was he so smart? He wanted to give himself a thumbs up.

Xie Sui’s dark eyes looked at him for half a beat. “Eat.”

Song Yu had taken over Xie Sui’s bed yesterday, forcing the other party onto the sofa. He still felt particularly guilty inside and wanted to struggle on, “My bed is very soft and comfortable, and I’m letting you sleep there for a night. Are you sure you don’t want to give it a try?”

Xie Sui chuckled, “I don’t want to sleep in your bed.”

In his heart, he added another sentence rather wickedly: I want to sleep with you. But these thoughts were something that Song Yu wouldn’t know about for a long time.

Song Yu: “… Oh.”

The monthly exam was just around the corner. The weekend was naturally used to study properly.

Song Yu had little bit of confidence in every topic except Chinese composition, which was something he hadn’t been good at in both his lives.

The entire school was watching his learning progress with fear.

Ma Xiaoding had specifically pulled together a small, four-person group chat.

It was called [ Jingcheng No.1 High Study God Exchange Group ] —he’d been entrusted by everyone in class one to supervise Song Yu’s progress.

The monthly exam was on Monday.

At night, during the weekend, Ma Xiaoding was sending out messages like crazy.

[ Sadako Won’t Forget Those Who Dug The Well: Brother Yu, Brother Yu, how are your studies going? ] 

For once, Song Yu was modest.

[ Your Husband, Brother Yu: Not too bad. ] 

But Xi Bowen had more questions.

[ Scholar Bowen: How good is ‘not too bad’? Brother Yu, my junior high school classmates are dying of anxiety. They wish they could add their own total scores to your score ]

Ma Xiaoding sniffed contemptuously.

[ Sadako Won’t Forget Those Who Dug The Well: I feel that Brother Yu can definitely get into the top 100. I don’t know what they’re so worried about [picking nose] ]

[ Sadako Won’t Forget Those Who Dug The Well: I saw that some people on the forums have started calling for those in the top 100 to hand in blank papers, and for those in the top 200 to ask for sick leave—Whew. ]

Song Yu was incredibly amused. If they really did that in order to send him into the top 100, then he didn’t have much to say about it. Although it was an unfair win, it was the students’ kind feelings, and such kindness was difficult to refuse.

The arrangements for the monthly exams came out. The exams were arranged according to the students’ results from their high school entrance examinations. Xie Sui was number one in the city and was arranged into the very first exam room, while Song Yu was a transfer student who had achieved no results and was thus arranged into the very last exam room.

Ma Xiaoding leaned against the seating chart and sighed, “Brother Yu, the gap between you and God Xie is a little big. One’s at the very front, and the other’s at the very back.”

Song Yu gnawed at the straw of his soymilk. He sat down in his seat, raised his eyebrows, and smiled, “How’s it big? We’ll be in the same exam room next time.”

He used his hand to hit his deskmate’s chair as he spoke.

“Xie Sui, isn’t that right?”

Xie Sui glanced at him and smiled slightly, “Mm. If you want me to hand in some blank papers, I can do that for you.”

Ma Xiaoding and Xi Bowen couldn’t stop laughing.

Song Yu angrily put his soymilk down on the table, “Write the whole thing for me! Who are you looking down on!”

The bell signaling the end of the self-study session rang out.

Everyone began to walk to their exam rooms. Song Yu’s classroom was in another building, and it was the most out-of-the-way classroom on the top floor. The first thing he saw as soon as he walked in was a bunch of bad students with messy school uniforms and long hair. They were sitting next to each other, chewing on nuts and fooling around.

Song Yu’s seat was at the very back.

He sat down and looked down. He found that his desk was covered in scribbles and, when he looked to the side, the wall was in the same state. However, these were all left behind from the previous exam and had nothing to do with his current January exam, so he wasn’t afraid of being caught for cheating.

Still though, Song Yu still found it rather irritating to the eyes. He took out his eraser and started rubbing off the pencil marks on the table. The student who would sit in front of him came over while he was very seriously wiping the table clean. He was a very weak and slender boy, both very short and surprisingly thin. He had very thick, square glasses, and his schoolbag was heavy and bulging like a snail’s shell.

His shoulders were scrunched up and his entire posture looked very tense.

One glance was enough to see that he was the kind of boy who was silent and had no sense of existence in class.

Song Yu set his eraser aside after he finished wiping and took advantage of the fact that it was still early to take a nap.

However, he’d just started feeling sleepy when the sound of a chair moving sounded out harshly in the room.

Someone was coming this way, but it didn’t affect his sleep.

“Hey, little classmate.”

It was that kind of slovenly, unfriendly tone.

But the gangster’s words weren’t spoken to Song Yu. Rather, they were spoken to the boy in front of Song Yu.

“How about taking care of me, your fellow brother, during the exam? It looks like your grades shouldn’t be too bad. Since we’re fellow classmates, we should help each other out, right?”

In the first monthly exam, the students who all sat in the bottom class were transfer students. They weren’t necessarily the ones with the worst grades.

The boy with glasses froze, his face red. He was very embarrassed, “My grades are also very bad. I, I don’t dare pass notes.”

The gangster wanted to reach out for a yard after taking an inch, directly picking up the boy’s schoolbag and weighing it in his hand twice. “Oh hey, it’s so heavy, yet you say you don’t know how to study? Could it be that it’s filled with shady things that people can’t see?”

The boy with glasses was both afraid and angry. He wanted to snatch it back, but he was pressed down by a hand on his head and couldn’t reach any further. The gangster stepped back, opened up his schoolbag, and turned it upside down, pouring out the things inside straight onto the floor. The books landed all over the floor, followed by a water cup, keys, and a stationery box.

His voice was full of mockery. He sneered as he emptied out the bag, “Good students just aren’t the same as us.”

After he finished pouring everything out, he lifted one of his feet and stepped on the books.

The gangster then tossed the schoolbag back at the boy with the glasses, his tone half threatening and half mocking, “How old are you to still be afraid of exams? You’re dragging on like this just because I asked you to pass notes. If Laozi doesn’t receive any, you don’t even have to think about taking the next exam.”

The boy with glasses trembled all over in anger, tears brimming in his eyes, “You, you, you’re going too far.”

The gangster was proud and arrogant. He sat on the boy’s desk, setting his feet on Song Yu’s desk, his attitude wild, “I’m going too far? Go and tell the teacher. Let’s see who ends up being the unlucky one.”

Song Yu, who’d been sleeping restlessly, was finally woken up by a loud noise beside his ear.