“Brother Yan, who are you chatting with? Smiling like this?”
The lunch hour at Enzi No. 1 High School had no campus lockdown, so whenever mealtime rolled around, the small restaurants outside the school gates were always packed with booming business.
The restaurant called “Zhuangyuan Building” that Duan Xiyan and Wu Hu went to was considered the highest-end option among all those small eateries. Its prices were a bit steep for middle schoolers, usually reserved for class gatherings.
Even so, the main dining hall was almost completely full.
Admittedly, with those prices, the interior decoration of Zhuangyuan Building actually looked the part, forming a sharp contrast with “Old Liu’s Stir-Fried Pork” next door, whose walls were entirely blackened by smoke.
The original young Master Duan had been pampered since childhood. He disliked the cafeteria food and thought those fly-by-night eateries near the school gate were unhygienic, so he basically solved all his meal problems at Zhuangyuan Building.
Since they arrived right during peak traffic hours, they had to wait a while before the dishes were finally served.
Looking at the generous portion of leafy greens and tofu in the soup basin, Duan Xiyan disappointed curl his lips.
He had wondered what kind of dish “Emerald and White Jade Soup” was, and it turned out to be nothing more than vegetable and tofu soup.
The Zhuangyuan beef was not bad, though. Piping hot spicy oil poured over evenly coated tender beef slices made for a numbing, satisfying bite.
Back in his past life at the sanatorium, Duan Xiyan’s diet had been plain day in and day out for a decade; he had never tasted anything so strongly flavored. This was simply too delicious.
As if discovering a new continent, his eyes lit up as he extended his chopsticks toward the nearby sweet-and-sour pork, which was similarly red and glossy. After popping a piece into his mouth to try it, the expected spicy flavor was entirely absent, replaced instead by a sweet-and-sour taste spreading across the tip of his tongue.
Duan Xiyan frowned, and the act of chewing became rather difficult.
How could meat possibly taste sweet? He could not understand it.
He could accept sweet zongzi and sweet tangyuan, but sweet meat was where he drew the line.
After finally swallowing it down, Duan Xiyan hurriedly took a sip of soup, letting the plain broth wash away the lingering sweet-and-sour taste in his mouth. Only then did his knitted brows slowly smooth out, and at that moment, he finally deemed the soup worthy of the name “Emerald and White Jade.”
Fortunately, the other dishes suited Duan Xiyan’s palate quite well, and he ate bite after bite with great relish.
Sitting opposite him, Wu Hu did not share his hearty appetite. He still seemed to be worrying about Zhang Yu’s threat to cause trouble for them.
The two teenagers sat facing each other across the table: one with a carefree expression inhaling his food enthusiastically, and the other wearing a gloomy face like he was attending a funeral, forming a sharp contrast.
“Sigh.” On Wu Hu’s third sigh with intentionally amplified volume, Duan Xiyan finally stopped his chopsticks.
“What is wrong? No appetite?” He wiped his mouth and looked up at Wu Hu.
“It is not that, it is just…” Wu Hu looked at his Brother Yan, who wore a blank expression as if he hadn’t taken Zhang Yu’s words to heart at all. Tugging his hair irritably, he couldn’t hold it in anymore and asked, “Brother Yan, aren’t you worried at all about what Zhang Yu and his gang are planning?”
So it was still about this matter. Duan Xiyan rested his hand on his round, full belly. The lazy state following a hearty meal made him unwilling to move an inch, nor did he want to ponder unpleasant topics.
He offered some comfort: “Don’t worry. Have you ever heard this saying?”
“What saying?” Wu Hu thrust his chopsticks back into his rice bowl and perked up his ears.
“When the enemy does not move, I do not move. Respond to all changes with constancy.”
Wu Hu was stunned at first, then fell into deep thought. After a moment, he nodded earnestly: “You are right, Brother Yan. Why couldn’t I think of something so profound?”
Looking at the thumbs-up across the table, Duan Xiyan silently swallowed the lines he had prepared to say next about crossing bridges when you come to them and letting things sort themselves out, and let out a satisfied burp.
He had originally worried that such a perfunctory comfort wouldn’t ease Wu Hu’s anxiety, but it seemed he had overthought it.
Old sayings truly proved their worth: a single sentence hit the spot, neither too much nor too little.
With his mood lifted, Wu Hu’s appetite improved too, and he even asked the waitress for another can of cola.
Seeing that Duan Xiyan had already called it quits, and unsure whether he still wanted any, Wu Hu specifically asked him.
Duan Xiyan recalled the little brown sweet water his cousin used to sneakily bring him when visiting the sanatorium during his childhood in his past life. It seemed it was called cola. He swallowed a tiny, imperceptible bit of saliva.
Yet the moment the ice-cold, carbonated cola entered his mouth, countless tiny bubbles exploded across Duan Xiyan’s tongue, sending a rush of air straight up through his throat to the top of his head. This bizarre sensation made Duan Xiyan pull a complicated face.
Only after the bubbles completely dissipated did the sweet flavor of the drink suddenly emerge.
It was a bit of a rush, but he still preferred drinking things without carbonation.
While sipping his cola in small sips and browsing his phone while waiting for Wu Hu, a WeChat friend request suddenly popped up.
[Verification message: I am Yu Zhen.]
Duan Xiyan, who had been absent-minded just a moment ago, instantly perked up and straightened his back.
Yu Zhen’s avatar was a blue cat, with someone’s hand outside the frame reaching out to scratch its chin while the blue cat stretched out its pink little tongue trying to lick that hand, looking lively and adorable.
Duan Xiyan clicked his tongue inwardly. He hadn’t expected Yu Zhen to look so cold on the outside while being so soft and cute on the inside. Having a cute cat head avatar was one thing, but his WeChat display name was actually a cat head too.
When editing the contact note, Duan Xiyan purposely did not delete that cat head icon.
Almost the next second after accepting the friend request, a transfer popped up in the chat window labeled with the note “Yu Zhen (Cat Head).”
[Yu Zhen (Cat Head): Money for the fever shot.]
When taking Yu Zhen to the school infirmary that morning, both Duan Xiyan and the nurse had mistakenly assumed Yu Zhen was just running a regular fever, so they gave him a fever shot, which Duan Xiyan had paid for out of pocket.
Yu Zhen had suffered a shot for nothing, and Duan Xiyan felt somewhat guilty thinking back on it, but he still accepted the transfer.
[D: I already told the head teacher about your leave of absence.]
Well aware that his credit score with the other party was practically negative and fearing the other might worry, Duan Xiyan reported back specially. After a brief wait, the other side replied with a [Thanks].
Duan Xiyan could easily imagine how cold those two words would sound if spoken out loud by Yu Zhen, but resting behind the soft, cute cat avatar, they suddenly looked rather soft and cute as well.
As everyone knows, tone is contagious during WeChat chatting, so when Yu Zhen saw the wavy dash following the “You’re welcome” sent by the other side, his expression paused.
[D: By the way. How did you get my WeChat?]
Yu Zhen stared at another wavy dash and sentence-ending particle sent from across the chat window, plunging into an eerie silence.
[Yu Zhen (Cat Head): It shows up underneath the personal QR code.]
Duan Xiyan had no idea about the rising and falling ripples inside Yu Zhen’s mind right at that moment. He was genuinely puzzled, and only after seeing the explanation did a sudden realization dawn on him.
So back at school just now, when he asked Yu Zhen to add him on WeChat, even though the other person acted indifferent on the surface, he had actually secretly memorized his WeChat ID.
He had almost thought Yu Zhen simply didn’t want to add him and used forgetting his phone as an excuse to brush him off. What a tsundere.
It seemed that Yu Zhen, who was destined to walk the path of dark awakening in the future, was still a proud yet soft-hearted teenager at heart. This sparked Duan Xiyan’s hope of building a friendly classmate relationship with him.
“Brother Yan, who are you chatting with? Smiling like this.” Wu Hu’s boisterous voice suddenly broke the silence. Hearing this, Duan Xiyan looked up, meeting Wu Hu’s gossipy gaze across the table. “Which girl is it?”
Before Duan Xiyan could open his mouth to defend himself, Wu Hu was already letting his imagination run wild, raising one hand: “Hold on, don’t tell me yet, let me guess. Could it be Shen Hanyue? She really is persistent enough.”
Shen Hanyue?
Duan Xiyan hadn’t expected Wu Hu’s wild gossip to actually conjure up a specific person. Yet as for this Shen Hanyue, he frowned and searched the original owner’s memories, but found no impression of her.
It was possible she really existed, but the original owner hadn’t paid attention to her. Duan Xiyan currently only inherited the deeper parts of the original owner’s memories, and at school, apart from his good buddy Wu Hu, the original owner’s memories basically revolved entirely around Yu Zhen.
Still, thinking about it this way, it was indeed a bit strange.
An adolescent teenager’s mind tended to fluctuate, and having a crush was the most normal thing in the world, yet the original owner didn’t have a single pink-tinted memory, his mind was entirely filled with Yu Zhen, Yu Zhen, and more Yu Zhen. This made Duan Xiyan begin to question the original owner’s motives for bullying Yu Zhen.
No matter what, Yu Zhen was an Omega after all.
Seeing Duan Xiyan offer no rebuttal, Wu Hu waggled his eyebrows teasingly: “So it really is her? Judging by that look on your face, is she finally making progress?”
Duan Xiyan hurriedly denied it: “It’s not her, I was chatting with my mom.”
As soon as those words left his mouth, he froze for a split second, his own mind questioning the statement first.
Why had he instinctively covered for himself to Wu Hu? There was nothing shameful about messaging Yu Zhen.
Pondering for a moment, Duan Xiyan attributed the reason to Wu Hu’s phrasing being too bizarre, making it sound as if he were cradling his phone like a fragile maiden, smiling all lovesick and dreamy when he clearly wasn’t doing anything of the sort.
Although Wu Hu’s description was a bit exaggerated, from Wu Hu’s perspective right now, he and Yu Zhen shouldn’t have such a friendly relationship yet.
Right, exactly, that was it. He lied simply to avoid giving Wu Hu any temporarily unnecessary little shocks, absolutely not out of a guilty conscience.
“Alright then,” the gossip flying away left Wu Hu looking distinctly regretful, but he immediately remembered something else. “During class earlier, why did you suddenly ask me where nobody goes in school? What happened?”
Good buddy, what a timely question.
The heart Duan Xiyan had just managed to soothe rose back into his throat. He couldn’t possibly say that because Yu Zhen had run off somewhere alone during his heat and he was worried about the other’s safety, he was searching all over the school for him, could he?
The last time he told Wu Hu he wouldn’t bully Yu Zhen anymore, it had already shocked the guy; if he told the truth this time, wouldn’t Wu Hu blow a fuse right on the spot?
What sane person would spend the last few days getting thugs to corner someone, only to be all lovey-dovey with them today?
It was absurd, over the top, to the degree that people would suspect someone else had swapped out the soul inside his body.
Considering Wu Hu’s mental state, Duan Xiyan decided to give him some time to adjust and buffer.
So he said: “Well, you know, just in case Zhang Yu and his gang want to pick a fight, we need to have a venue ready.”
Hearing this, Wu Hu experienced a flash of absolute enlightenment and nodded deeply. This answer fit his chuunibyou soul, which was filled with blade-flashing street fights.
He had initially thought Duan Xiyan had come up with some new idea to fix Yu Zhen and was looking for a suitable, hidden venue for it. He hadn’t realized his own perspective was too narrow, he still had to hand it to his Brother Yan.
Times were different now, they were people with blood feuds on their hands.
“Brother Yan, you’re right. I never expected you to have thought things through to this extent,” Wu Hu said with an expression of deep admiration, before growing faintly excited. “Zhang Yu and his gang have plenty of people on their side, so we need to recruit a few more helpers as well.”
“Mm.” Duan Xiyan nodded with feigned solemnity.
Watching Wu Hu’s earnest scheming, Duan Xiyan hadn’t the heart to burst his bubble, and a strange sense of guilt, like keeping a concubine behind the main wife’s back, welled up inside him.