The moment the head teacher left the classroom, during the brief window before morning study, Shen Ying eagerly set about rearranging his desks and chairs. After moving his own, he didn’t forget to help Jiang Shi with his as well.
However, Jiang Shi quickly pressed down on Shen Ying’s wrist, saying he would do it himself.
At the exact moment of physical contact, both froze for a split second before Jiang Shi withdrew his hand with lightning speed.
Shen Ying just chuckled in response, entirely single minded as he waited for Jiang Shi and him to successfully become desk mates, paying no mind to the expressions of their classmates around them.
Surprise, confusion, sudden understanding, curiosity, a complex mixture of emotions.
After Jiang Shi arranged his desk and chair and sat down, he met Shen Ying’s brilliantly unmasked gaze, as well as Shen Ying’s unconsciously side angled posture leaning in close to him.
The two of them were extremely close right now, closer than the social distance Jiang Shi had previously been physiologically capable of accepting. Still, he understood that this sort of distance fell within the normal, non-offensive range for regular social interaction.
“What happened to your face?” Jiang Shi stared at the bruise on Shen Ying’s face, his gaze darkening.
“It’s nothing.” Shen Ying, who had been too happy looking at Jiang Shi, almost forgot about the conspicuous mark on his face. “Bumped it by accident.”
“Shen Ying.”
“Huh?” Shen Ying was stunned by Jiang Shi’s sudden, forceful tone.
Looking at him, Jiang Shi’s tone was undeniably firm. “You must tell me the truth when you’re with me.”
Shen Ying fell silent for a fraction of a second. He knew very well that the flimsy excuse he’d come up with wasn’t something anyone with half a brain would believe could cause that kind of injury.
Sighing helplessly, Shen Ying leaned a bit closer to Jiang Shi again, speaking in a low voice right next to him.
“I got into a fight last night with some idiot from my old school. Honestly, I could have beaten him, but I got distracted for a second and he managed to hit me.” Completely oblivious to Jiang Shi’s subtle physical reaction, Shen Ying continued in a soft voice. “Still, that idiot’s injuries are a lot worse than mine.”
Startled and stiffened by his sudden, unannounced approach, Jiang Shi lost all of his usual chilling aura. A moment later, he lowered his gaze to study the head leaning in close to his ear, his throat bobbing involuntarily.
“Why did you get into a fight?” Jiang Shi snapped out of it and asked.
Jiang Shi subconsciously mimicked the volume of Shen Ying’s voice, meaning that whatever they were talking about was entirely inaudible to anyone else, outsiders could only see the two of them leaning closer and closer together as they spoke.
“He was spreading rumors at my old school that my grandpa’s surgery didn’t save him. I was furious, and since I was transferring anyway, I figured I had to give him a thorough beating.”
Hearing the reason, Jiang Shi fell silent for a long moment before speaking softly. “Don’t do that anymore. No more fighting.”
“Alright, don’t worry.” Shen Ying replied quickly, demonstrating that under normal circumstances, he was actually a very low-maintenance person.
Gazing at the face right before him and those sincere, obedient eyes, the frustration in the depths of Jiang Shi’s heart dissipated significantly. He opened his school bag and took out an external ointment he had bought on his way to school that morning.
“Here, apply this three times a day.” Jiang Shi handed the small bottle over to Shen Ying.
“Why do you have this in your bag?” Shen Ying asked in surprise as he took it.
“Brother Lin told me your face was hurt. I bought it for you when we passed a pharmacy.”
Shen Ying grew even more astonished, his mouth parting in flattered disbelief. “You bought this for me specially on your way to school?”
“Mn.” Jiang Shi looked at him and repeated, “No more fighting from now on. No getting hurt, I don’t like it.”
Hearing this, Shen Ying hastily raised a hand in promise. “Don’t worry, I really won’t do it again. Actually, I didn’t usually fight with people before either, I was just too angry this time, and besides…”
At the word “besides,” Shen Ying’s voice dropped even lower, and he leaned in close to Jiang Shi’s ear once more.
“My grandpa said it himself, his life is yours now. How could I let someone get away with spreading rumors like that? My grandpa’s life is the one you saved.” Shen Ying said this with a smile in his voice. “But since you don’t like me fighting, I won’t ever dare do it again. At Yinan No. 1 High School, I promise I won’t cause any trouble or make things difficult for you.”
As he watched Shen Ying offer repeated guarantees, before Jiang Shi could reply, he noticed two peeping gazes coming from nearby and raised his head to shoot them a cold glare.
“Ahem,” Noticing Jiang Shi’s look, Zhao Lingfan was the first to react, turning to Tao Ruiyu next to him. “The weather’s been turning chilly lately, my throat feels a bit off.”
“Yeah, I’m dizzy too, almost couldn’t get up this morning.” Tao Ruiyu immediately chimed in.
With that, the two turned their heads back and sat up straight.
Hearing their voices, Shen Ying turned his head to watch them finish speaking, then shifted his gaze to Jiang Shi’s neat, clean school uniform jacket. It wasn’t hard to tell that Jiang Shi was wearing a short-sleeved school uniform underneath. He couldn’t help offering a reminder, “The weather’s been changing pretty fast lately. Your school doesn’t require your inner layers to be uniform too, right? You should wear a long-sleeved shirt.”
“Our school.” Who would have thought that upon hearing Shen Ying’s considerate concern, Jiang Shi would reply with just those two words?
Shen Ying was blank for a few seconds before quick wittedly reacting, “Oh right, right, our school. First day here, not used to it yet.”
“There’s no rule like that.” Jiang Shi finally answered his question directly, glancing down at Shen Ying’s clothes at the same time.
Noticing his gaze, Shen Ying lowered his head to look at his own outfit as well, giving a soft laugh. “The clothes I’m wearing today were all gifts from you.”
His voice wasn’t particularly low when he said this, and Zhao Lingfan and Tao Ruiyu, who were sitting closest to them, seemed to catch it. The two exchanged a tacit glance, their expressions a mix of oddness and surprise.
Throughout the very first morning confirming Shen Ying’s transfer, Peng Sheng found himself increasingly annoyed by the endless stream of questions from his classmates. Consequently, during the breaks after the final two periods of the morning, he bolted straight to the restroom just to escape the clamor, not even caring about the smell.
Naturally, most of those asking about Shen Ying’s situation were just gossiping, and he couldn’t be bothered to deal with them.
When lunch hour arrived, instead of following the main crowd to the cafeteria, he bought a cup of oden from the school convenience store and took it back to the classroom to eat.
After finishing, he pulled out his phone, thinking about messaging Shen Ying to ask how he was doing at his new school. Yet somehow, he found himself completely at a loss for how to phrase the words.
By the time the quiet teaching building slowly began to fill up with students again, he still hadn’t managed to send a single message.
“Peng Sheng, I just got back from eating outside. There’s a guy named Lin at the school gate asking if I know you, saying he’s looking for you about something.” A boy from the next class over stood outside the classroom window and called out to him loudly.
“A guy named Lin?” Peng Sheng stood up in surprise. “Did he say anything else besides looking for me?”
“No, just asked me to tell you if I saw you. He said if he couldn’t wait twenty minutes, he’d leave.”
With that, Peng Sheng hurried out of the classroom, tossing back a quick “Thanks!” before vanishing in a flash.
A guy named Lin, Peng Sheng’s immediate reaction was to think of Brother Lin from by Jiang Shi’s side.
Sure enough, when he hurried close to the school gate, he spotted a familiar figure in the distance. He had visited Grandpa Shen at the hospital several times recently and had run into Brother Lin on multiple occasions, so they were already acquainted.
“Brother Lin, are you looking for me?” Peng Sheng raised his volume, and Brother Lin immediately turned around.
Brother Lin smiled at him. “Yes, I wanted to ask you about something. Did I interrupt your lunch break?”
“Not at all, not at all.” Peng Sheng hurriedly said, “Why did you suddenly look for me… wait, don’t tell me something happened to Shen Ying?!”
“Not exactly… but close?” Brother Lin gave a vague answer first before quickly revealing the purpose of his trip. “My young master asked me to find out whether Shen Ying had anyone at Linbei No. 3 High School who was particularly hostile toward him. Figuring it’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack to search blindly, I thought I’d just come ask you.”
“Someone hostile to Shen Ying? Why would your young master suddenly want to know that?” Peng Sheng looked at him, puzzled.
Brother Lin deliberated for two seconds before speaking. “Shen Ying seemed to get into a fight yesterday and got hurt on the face…”
“Shen Ying got hurt?!!” Peng Sheng couldn’t wait for him to finish, instantly panicking. “Is it serious? Did he go to school today? Where is he?”
“Don’t panic, he’s safe and sound studying at Yinan No. 1 High School right now. The injury on his face looked pretty bad, but it shouldn’t be a big deal. My young master just wants to know who he got into a fight with. Can you guess who might have fought with Shen Ying?”
Zhuang Kangbo’s face immediately flashed through Peng Sheng’s mind. Wasn’t Zhuang Kangbo sporting a bruised and battered face when he went to school this morning?
To think it really was Shen Ying’s handy work!
“I think I know who it is.” Peng Sheng looked at Brother Lin, hesitating whether to speak. “May I ask what your young master plans to do? It’s not… going to be murder and silencing witnesses, is it?”
He whispered the last sentence only after glancing left and right.
He hadn’t forgotten that Jiang Shi seemed to give off faint yandere vibes. Rich, yandere, and looking hard to mess with, it was practically a stack of buffs straight out of the novels he read.
Brother Lin was amused by the young man’s remark. “My young master won’t commit any unlawful acts.”
Well, thought Peng Sheng, you never know, rich guys like you are always the most heavy-handed.
After all, he had Zhuang Kangbo right in his own circle, a guy who relied on his family having a bit more money than ordinary folks to bully classmates every day, notorious for heavy-handedness while managing to evade school punishment every single time.
Because Shen Ying only had his grandfather to lean on, he was inexplicably targeted and harassed by Zhuang Kangbo ever since coming to Linbei No. 3 High School for high school. If not for Shen Ying’s stellar grades and popularity, which drew special attention and protection from teachers, who knew how many times he would have been targeted.
Plenty of people at Linbei No. 3 High School couldn’t stand Zhuang Kangbo, and many wanted to beat him up under the cover of darkness. Unfortunately, not many kids at Linbei’s families had more money than his, so no one dared make a move lightly.
Shen Ying stood by the corridor railing outside the classroom, resting both hands on the banister as he stared straight down at the ground floor, watching Jiang Shi’s solitary figure moving away to pick up lunch.
It was currently lunch break. Jiang Shi hadn’t taken him to squeeze into the crowded cafeteria with the other classmates, explaining that he usually ate in the classroom because someone from home would deliver meals to him.
Coming to Yinan No. 1 High School, everything felt fresh to Shen Ying, vastly different from the rhythm of his previous campus life.
Although only a morning had passed, here by Jiang Shi’s side, his sole focus was studying and catching up on his coursework. He didn’t have to worry about how his grandpa was doing with work out there, well, right now, he didn’t have to worry about his grandpa lacking care at the hospital either. Nor did he have to think about how to deal with the idiots who inexplicably showed up every day to disrupt his studies.
Of course, throughout the morning, apart from catching up on his lessons efficiently under Jiang Shi’s tutoring, the only thing Shen Ying pondered was how Jiang Shi seemed to have zero friends in this school. Aside from talking to him, Jiang Shi hadn’t uttered a single word to anyone else, nor had anyone bothered to strike up a conversation with him.
As for the classmates who had been so openly curious about him as a transfer student, the moment he became desk-mates with Jiang Shi, they stopped trying to help him study altogether. They acted completely indifferent to him, going about their own business and even deliberately avoiding glancing his way.
Actually, back at Linbei No. 3 High School, Shen Ying rarely had time to maintain a social life either, but it had never been like this, becoming a complete transparent non-entity.
Being invisible wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t figure out why Jiang Shi had no friends at Yinan No. 1 High School.
Everything Jiang Shi had said on WeChat yesterday had actually been true, he hadn’t been testing his loyalty at all.