PSWHNC CH17

Chapter 17 I’m Going to Beat Him Up

“……” Xiao Yan rubbed the top of his head. On the rice in the tray in front of him, a small mandarin had inexplicably appeared. On its skin was a doodled meme, one with a sideways glance and a melon in its mouth. The drawing style and the method of delivery were both familiar. Very practiced.

It was clearly the work of someone he knew. And this was not the first time.

Sure enough, when he turned around, he caught a glimpse of someone in a red-and-white school uniform darting past the back exit of the canteen, running off at full speed.

By a table in the back, Luo Zhiyu’s roommate, Jing Ximing, was quietly tiptoeing away.

“Huh? Yan-ge, where’d that mandarin come from? Looks pretty sour.” Zhang Shu, who had been buried in his dinner, looked up and saw the extra mandarin on Xiao Yan’s tray. “Isn’t our stingy school only giving fruit to the first-years?”

“Oho, which freshman’s got a crush on our campus heartthrob now?” Fan Yue had just returned from buying a drink and immediately spotted the mandarin in Xiao Yan’s hand. “Already sending snacks and drinks? Not a great choice though. Why a mandarin out of all fruits?”

“Let’s just have it as our after-dinner fruit.” Fan Yue really wasn’t picky.

“No one’s got a crush. They’ve got a target.” Xiao Yan shoved the mandarin into his school uniform pocket. “Someone’s clearly asking for a beating. Let’s eat first. After dinner, I’m heading to his classroom to beat him up.”

Fan Yue: “…Pfft. It’s Luo Zhiyu, isn’t it?”

“I’m gonna beat him up good.” Xiao Yan gave the mandarin in his pocket a squeeze. “No mercy.”

Luo Zhiyu waited just outside the canteen for Jing Ximing. The setting sun had turned the treetops gold. Squatting under a tree, Luo Zhiyu was idly picking up fallen leaves. When he was little, there had been a large parasol tree at the end of his street. After school, fifth-grader Xiao Yan used to stand under it and pelt him with its seed pods whenever he wasn’t paying attention.

“Let’s go.” Spotting his deskmate approaching, Luo Zhiyu stood up and brushed the dust off his clothes.

“You provoke him even while eating? Are you two planning to never have peace again?” Jing Ximing had rushed out so quickly he hadn’t even slung his backpack on properly.

“We have thought about calling a truce.” To avoid Xiao Yan retaliating, they’d taken a quieter path back to their classroom. Both sides of the lane were lined with parasol trees, and the fallen leaves were slowly piling up around their feet. “But it was just a thought.”

It wasn’t something that could be resolved overnight.

“Fair enough, but I bet Xiao Yan’s thinking the same thing. You two are stuck in a loop. God knows when it’ll break. Do you still remember that you need something from him? You still have to go to the hospital with him this weekend. Hey, watch your step…”

The leaves covered the ground, and also the edge of a storm drain cover.

“I’m not provoking him. He keeps picking on me. I’m just hitting back. It’s standard procedure. You should’ve seen how he used to bully me when we were kids. All I’ll say is, what goes around comes around…” Luo Zhiyu was mid-rant, not watching where he was going, and stepped right onto the edge of an old, broken drain cover.

The sewer wasn’t deep, and it had long since dried up, its floor layered with leaves. There was a sharp crack. Luo Zhiyu couldn’t pull his foot back in time, twisted his ankle, and lost his balance completely.

Luo Zhiyu: “…Ow.”

Jing Ximing: “…Shit.”

“How did you even fall like this?” The school nurse was disinfecting the scrape on Luo Zhiyu’s knee. “Why were you two walking on that old, dilapidated path in the first place? And even if you did, don’t you students watch where you’re going?”

When Luo Zhiyu fell, his last conscious thought had actually been to protect Xiao Yan’s uniform. He braced himself with his hands on the ground, so his school uniform didn’t get a speck of dust on it.

Which was why he now sat in the nurse’s office, wincing as the school nurse cleaned the scrapes on both palms and wrapped them in gauze.

“Ow, ow, ow.” There was some gauze wrapped around his wrist too.

“He bumped his forehead too,” Jing Ximing said, brushing aside Luo Zhiyu’s bangs. “Tsk, that’s rough.”

“This one’s okay. Won’t scar, but it’s going to hurt,” the nurse said as she examined the injury. “I’ll give it a quick wrap. Try not to get it wet for the next few days.”

Luo Zhiyu, who had very much been thinking about how to mess with Xiao Yan while walking, quietly kept that fact to himself.

“I’ve got my student council interview tonight,” Luo Zhiyu said, limping and leaning on Jing Ximing for support. “Luo Zhiyu is physically disabled but determined. Do you think the teacher will give me bonus points?”

“You sure you’re up for it?” Jing Ximing was still shaken from having watched the whole fall happen.

“I’m fine. It’s just a minor injury.” Luo Zhiyu sounded completely confident. “Help me back upstairs, then I’ll go find Xiao Yan’s roommate in Class 2-3 and get the signed application form.”

In Class 1-3’s classroom, evening self-study hadn’t officially started yet. Most of the students hadn’t returned, and only a scattered few were inside, racing against time to finish exercises and practice papers.

Luo Zhiyu’s seat was easy to spot. Like many others, he had a stack of books on his desk, but his was piled the highest, like he was building a makeshift barricade to block the teacher’s line of sight. It was obvious he liked to pull stunts during classes. Xiao Yan walked closer for a better look. Luo Zhiyu didn’t actually have that many textbooks. Most of the stack was filled with sketchbooks.

The students in Class 1-3 all recognized Xiao Yan. A few even greeted him.

“Luo Zhiyu went to get dinner. He’s not back yet,” Lin Ziyi said. “You can wait for him at his seat if you want.”

There was a Chinese textbook spread open on Luo Zhiyu’s desk. School had only just started, but he’d already added his own illustrations to every text in the book. Next to it was a thin calligraphy copybook in the Slender Gold style. Bored, Xiao Yan flipped through it. Luo Zhiyu had clearly been putting in real effort to improve his handwriting. But amidst the messy, misaligned strokes on the tracing pages, Xiao Yan saw the traces of an unruly soul.

“What does the campus heartthrob want with Zhiyu?” someone in the class who liked to gossip asked.

“To beat him up,” Xiao Yan replied casually.

Before the evening self-study session began, Xiao Yan ended up running into Luo Zhiyu’s roommate, Jing Ximing, but still no sign of Luo Zhiyu.

Jing Ximing: “……” As expected, the victim of the mandarin attack had come looking for payback.

“Where’s Luo Zhiyu?” Xiao Yan asked. “After commiting something bad, he’s now too scared to come back?”

“He… just went to your class.” He claimed he could hop up the stairs on one foot all by himself.

Xiao Yan: “……”

In Class 2-3’s classroom, the curtains were tightly drawn. The students who had already returned were still in their usual pre-study gossip mode.

Someone had brought up the scumbag from the neighboring school again, and the conversation looped back to that morning’s incident.

Fan Yue, trying to defend his roommate’s reputation, jumped in before things spiraled. “Xiao Yan and Luo Zhiyu will go for a pheromone test over the weekend. It’s for research. There’s nothing going on between them. Zero-match, guys. It’s already a miracle they’re not fighting.”

“I think so too,” someone said. “Xiao Yan doesn’t seem like the scumbag alpha type.”

“Xiao Yan’s not a scumbag. He doesn’t bully people.”

“Misunderstanding, misunderstanding. Our campus heartthrob is the face of our school. He’s handsome, has good grades, and his character is perfectly fine.”

“Exactly,” Tang Yuan chimed in with his usual ‘scumbag alpha mini-lecture.’ “A real scumbag A usually has a deceptive nature. On the surface, they are gentle, but inside, they are turbulent. And their friends usually collude with them, helping them cover up the fact that they were a scumbag. I don’t think it’s hard to identify them. Even in high school, a scumbag alpha can cause emotional damage to the omegas or betas around them, and even worse, physical harm!”

“Which is why we should start resisting them early, even in high school,” Fan Yue added. “You are who you hang out with. We should boycott their whole friend group.”

The class was listening intently when the door suddenly swung open. Xiao Yan walked in. “What are you guys talking about now?”

“You,” Tang Yuan said. “We’re praising you for being reasonable.”

“Has Luo Zhiyu been here?” Xiao Yan had come up the east stairwell but hadn’t seen him anywhere.

“Huh?” Fan Yue said. “Nope, haven’t seen him. We’ve just been talking. Did you go downstairs to settle the score?”

Getting hit with a mandarin was a grudge not easily forgotten.

“Yeah,” Xiao Yan nodded. “Went down to beat him up.”

But he hadn’t found him.

“Hahahah, he really deserves a lesson. He’s just asking for a beating,” Fan Yue agreed.

Just as they were talking, the back door of the classroom swung open. Luo Zhiyu came in, panting, having limped his way up the west stairwell. His wrists and palms were wrapped in gauze, he had a patch on his forehead, and a bandage under one eye.

He’d broken into a sweat on the way up, his cheeks slightly flushed. Combined with the bandages and bruises, he looked especially pitiful.

Class 2-3’s room was silent this time, without even any background music, just an eerie silence.

“Sorry to interrupt.” Luo Zhiyu, slightly out of breath, leaned against the doorframe and took a limping step inside. He was about to ask about the student council matter. “Xiao Yan, you…”

“He beat him up that bad?” someone whispered.

“This nails the vibes.”

Luo Zhiyu: “?”

Xiao Yan: “???”