PSWHNC CH21

Chapter 21 A Slight Possibility

Luo Zhiyu glanced around, sensing that something was off. He shifted one more seat to the right, leaving two empty seats between him and Xiao Yan. The murmuring around them only grew louder.

Xiao Yan stood up and, under everyone’s watchful eyes, sat down next to Luo Zhiyu. He took out one of his earphones and handed it to Luo Zhiyu.

Luo Zhiyu: “?”

“What’s going on?” Fan Yue turned on his mic. “Yan-ge, did the exam drain you or something?”

“I’m fine.” The respawn timer on his phone was painfully slow. Since they were in a hospital, Xiao Yan kept his voice low as he spoke into the mic. “I’m here with Zhiyu. Hurry up and play.”

“Oh, got it.” Fan Yue rallied the rest of the team while asking, “How are they testing it? Still using pheromone test strips?”

“Blood test,” Xiao Yan replied while continuing to play.

“What the hell?” Fan Yue blurted out, “Isn’t that for pre-marital checkups?”

His voice was so loud that it startled Luo Zhiyu, who was wearing the earphones.

“If it wasn’t absolutely necessary, who would want to do a pre-marital checkup with him?” Luo Zhiyu snapped into the mic.

Xiao Yan: “???”

“Are Luo Zhiyu and Xiao Yan here?” The nurse pushed open the door and immediately spotted the two clearly out-of-place high school students in the queue.

“Here.” Xiao Yan cut the voice chat and logged off. “You guys keep playing. I’m done for now.”

“You’ll get reported and lose points for doing that. A few more times and you’ll be banned,” Luo Zhiyu, who had been secretly peeking at Xiao Yan’s phone screen, kindly reminded him. “That’s how my account got suspended last week.”

“It’s fine, we’re about to win anyway.” Xiao Yan gave Luo Zhiyu a push toward the room. “Don’t worry about them. We all know each other.”

“Which one of you wants to go first?” the nurse asked. “The director already informed us that this is a follow-up pheromone compatibility test, right?”

“I’ll go first.” Luo Zhiyu was quick to respond. He took off his school uniform jacket, rolled up his sleeve, and plopped down in the chair. But when he glanced at the things in the nurse’s hand, he chickened out.

“Hey, can you cover my eyes?” 

“……”

Covering someone’s eyes like that was considered a relatively intimate gesture between an alpha and omega. Luo Zhiyu’s physiological class had clearly gone to waste, but Xiao Yan understood this.

The nurse urged him to hurry. “It’s fine, it’s just a small favor. Besides, your compatibility isn’t that high anyway.”

Xiao Yan stepped forward and gently covered Luo Zhiyu’s eyes with both hands. Luo Zhiyu really did have a fear of needles. He didn’t say anything, but Xiao Yan could feel his eyelashes trembling slightly and his breathing growing light as the needle pierced his skin.

“Alright, you can open your eyes now. It’s done.” Xiao Yan helped Luo Zhiyu put his school jacket back on and guided him to sit down and wait.

“Handsome, it doesn’t look like you two get along that badly. Can’t be a 0% compatibility, right? The director’s overreacting,” the nurse joked with Xiao Yan. “There’s got to be at least a slight compatibility.”

“I think so too,” Xiao Yan said. “There’s probably at least a little.”

Half an hour later, Luo Zhiyu, who had dozed off in his chair, was shaken awake by Xiao Yan.

“? Where am I?” Luo Zhiyu mumbled, still half-asleep.

“At the hospital. We’re here for the follow-up test.” Xiao Yan held up the new results in front of him. “Congrats, we’re now officially a high-priority case for the city’s social harmony task force.”

“0?” Luo Zhiyu wasn’t particularly surprised. “Told you a retest isn’t necessary.”

“0.001.” Basically the same as zero.

Luo Zhiyu: “???”

“0.001? What even is that?” Luo Zhiyu felt like that was worse than a flat zero. “Just a tiny bit of compatibility?”

The hospital was completely stunned. In all their years of practice, they’d never seen a case like this.

“I don’t know what to call it either. The data’s already been uploaded,” Xiao Yan said, patting Luo Zhiyu on the shoulder and motioning for him to get up. “Let’s go. We’re done here. Teacher Li told us to check in with him back at school.”

Unlike the city hospital, Teacher Li, the homeroom teacher of Class 2-3, gave that 0.001% an overwhelmingly positive evaluation.

“You know what hope is? This is hope,” Teacher Li said, patting the test results. “It means you two can put your differences aside. We’ve gone from zero possibility to a tiny bit of possibility. As long as you hold on to that tiny bit, you can build a valuable friendship.”

Xiao Yan: “Okay.”

Luo Zhiyu: “Okay.”

The two people with ‘a tiny bit of possibility’ walked out of Teacher Li’s office, dazed after a long lecture on interpersonal relationships for teenagers, only to find that it had started raining.

“Wait a second.” Hearing the rain outside, Teacher Li rummaged through a drawer and managed to find only a pink umbrella. He handed it to Xiao Yan. “Tang Yuan lost this last Friday. You two are in the same dorm, so just bring it back to him.”

Tang Yuan’s fierce alpha aesthetic leaned on the unconventional side. The small pink umbrella, both in color and size, was clearly not suited for two people, but with no other options, Xiao Yan and Luo Zhiyu had no choice but to squeeze underneath it and slowly head toward the dorms.

Outside the tiny umbrella, the rain poured down. Because of the time and weather, the path was almost completely empty.

“Move this way a bit,” Xiao Yan said as they passed the track. He gave Luo Zhiyu a gentle tug in his direction. “Water tends to pool over there.”

“You know your way around No. 1 High pretty well?”

“You’ll know it well too after spending a year here,” Xiao Yan said, tilting the umbrella slightly more toward Luo Zhiyu without realizing it. “Every blade of grass, every tree, you’d remember it all.”

As they passed the track, Luo Zhiyu remembered what Jing Ximing had said. He pointed toward the alpha dorms. “Your dorm’s that way.”

“I know.” Xiao Yan didn’t stop walking and gestured for Luo Zhiyu to keep moving forward. “It’s the same either way. I’ll get there.”

It was the last heavy rain of late summer, fading into early autumn. The falling rain slowly blurred the outlines of buildings and lights, separating the world outside the umbrella from the one beneath it.

Back in the dorm, Xiao Yan sat with a towel, drying his soaked hair. He paused now and then to reply to messages on his phone.

“Yan-ge, you might as well just take a shower,” Zhang Shu said, unable to watch any longer. “You’re dripping all over the place.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Xiao Yan replied. “Let me finish this message first.”

[Zhile]: Did you get back to the dorm?

[Gunpowder Smoke Fills the Air]: Yeah, yeah. You’re worried about me? smirking.jpg

[Not Zhile]︰Yan-ge.

[Gunpowder Smoke Fills the Air]: Why so sweet all of a sudden?

[Zhile]: Can I borrow your account for a bit? I promise I’ll rank up.

[Gunpowder Smoke Fills the Air]: …Fine, take it.

[Zhile]: Thanks, ge.

[Zhile]: I promise to make the most of that 0.001% chance and get along with you. No fighting.

“I have something to confess,” Fan Yue said as he staggered over to Xiao Yan, with two brooms and a mop strapped to his back using a jump rope. He dropped to one knee and cupped his hands in mock sincerity.

Xiao Yan set down his phone, still smiling from the last message. “…What is this? A formal apology?”

“Earlier this afternoon, after the placement exam ended, you see…” Fan Yue said, looking a little embarrassed.

Xiao Yan: “Mm?”

“So I called up about ten guys to play a few rounds of games.”

Xiao Yan: “Mm.”

“We played in Class 2-3’s room because the teachers don’t care after the exam. Then another ten guys showed up just to watch us play.”

Xiao Yan: “……”

“And… um, now they all know you two went for a pre-marital checkup.”

Xiao Yan: “???”

“But don’t worry, I explained it for you,” Fan Yue said quickly.

“They all believed me. We all know there’s absolutely nothing going on between you two.”

Luo Zhiyu and Jing Ximing sat cross-legged on the dorm floor, staring blankly at the cooking pot that had somehow appeared.

“Here’s the thing,” Jing Ximing began, “tomorrow’s morning assembly is canceled.”

Luo Zhiyu: “And the pot?”

“The pot’s just making a one-day tour of our dorm,” Jing Ximing said, shattering Luo Zhiyu’s brief moment of hope. “We still have to return it tomorrow night, and the self-reflection essay still needs to be read. No one’s getting out of that.”

Jing Ximing went on, tapping the pot with his chopsticks, “Lao Wu came up with a plan. Each dorm that broke the rules has to record a short video reflecting on their violation, with the contraband item in frame, and post it in the school-parent group chat by midnight. That’s it.”

Luo Zhiyu: “……”

“Since the credits are already docked, no one’s actually going to reflect. It’s more of a joke at this point,” Jing Ximing said. “I asked around. The dorm with the electric blanket did a yoga skit, the fridge guys are doing a mini coffin dance with their mini-fridge, and the ones caught with a curling iron are filming a wotagei. So, what should we do?”

“We…” Luo Zhiyu looked over at his desk, where a bag of mandarins he’d just bought yesterday sat next to a box of markers.

A spark of inspiration flashed in his eyes. “Let’s stew mandarins in the pot.”

And draw meme faces on them, just like a certain someone’s current profile picture.

“I’ll reflect very sincerely.”