The next morning.
Tang Yu woke up feeling fully refreshed, only to find his phone blowing up with WeChat messages from Xie Tianyi.
6:12 AM
[Xie Tianyi: Bro! You good?]
[Xie Tianyi: I’m so bored! Wanna jump into the Rift for a game?]
9:24 AM
[Xie Tianyi: Why aren’t you replying to me?]
11:43 AM
[Xie Tianyi: No way… It’s almost noon, you’re still not awake?]
[Xie Tianyi: Bro, does your waist hurt?]
[Xie Tianyi: Is your chastity still intact?!]
Tang Yu: “…”
Chastity? What the hell is he talking about?
Tang Yu replied: [What kind of nonsense are you babbling about?]
They must have been typing at the exact same time, because the moment Tang Yu hit send, another message popped up.
Xie Tianyi: [Bai Yuenian didn’t do anything to you, right?]
Tang Yu: ???
Bai Yuenian! Do what to him?!
Bit by bit, yesterday’s memories began trickling back. He remembered they were hanging out at the Ranxing BBQ joint.
Bai Yuenian had lost a game, and everyone was scrambling to peek at his phone contacts.
He also remembered that the user “Minus Two” on the school forum was actually Wu Jianqi!
And after that… Xie Tianyi had shoved him straight into Bai Yuenian’s arms.
Tang Yu: O︿O
[Tang Yu: Xie Ruhu! Come Monday, you’re a dead man!]
Setting his phone aside, Tang Yu kicked the bed in a fit of rage, making the frame shake three times in a row.
Arghhh… Xie Ruhu actually dumped him onto the main male lead?!
Although he was still under eighteen…a strictly hands-off age where nothing explicit could possibly happen, giving him full confidence that no alcohol-fueled, pixelated scenes took place…and despite the fact that he and Bai Yuenian weren’t a real couple…
Tang Yu still felt the excruciating embarrassment of a public execution.
It was terrifying. Even standing on the school podium reading a self-criticism essay hadn’t felt this cringe-inducing.
What actually happened after that yesterday?
He couldn’t remember a thing!
Xie Ruhu had mentioned before that whenever Tang Yu got drunk, he would cling to people and talk endlessly. Did he say anything weird to Bai Yuenian?
He was going crazy!
Should he… go test the waters?
Tang Yu bounced out of bed and secretly pulled back a corner of the curtain.
His villa sat directly opposite Bai Yuenian’s, with their second-floor bedrooms facing each other window-to-window.
Bai Yuenian’s desk happened to be right by his window.
Across the way, Bai Yuenian appeared to be studying.
Tang Yu couldn’t help but feel curious. Is this guy always so upright no matter what he’s doing? Does he never slump or slouch at home? Doesn’t he get tired?
Just as the thought crossed his mind, the guy opposite seemed to sense something and suddenly looked up, right toward him.
Tang Yu flinched, snapping the curtain shut in a panic.
Tang Yu: “…”
It wasn’t until he was crouching under the window sill that he snapped back to reality. Why am I acting so guilty? This is my house, I can do whatever I want!
Besides, Bai Yuenian couldn’t have seen him, right? He’d only lifted a tiny corner. The guy didn’t have X-ray vision.
Tang Yu stood up, pulled the curtain wide open, and boldly met the gaze from across the way.
Now what? How should he test the waters? He needed an excuse to sneak over to the other side first.
Tang Yu’s eyes landed on the test papers neatly placed on his desk.
Aha! Got it!
Ten minutes later, Tang Yu…who had originally come over under the pretext of studying…ended up sitting in Bai Yuenian’s room eating lunch. His stomach had betrayed him by growling the second he walked through the door, so Aunty Liang had promptly fussed over him and set him down with a meal.
Tang Yu glanced at the guy beside him, nudged Bai Yuenian’s shoe with his own slipper, and as soon as Bai Yuenian turned to look, launched his probe: “What time did we get back yesterday?”
Bai Yuenian’s chopsticks paused for a fraction of a second. “Around eight, I think.”
Tang Yu: “…”
Game over!
Based on what Xie Tianyi said, he knew they had left the BBQ place at seven, and the normal commute home was only ten minutes.
So… what happened during those extra fifty minutes? Tang Yu felt a sudden wave of chest tightness.
After lunch, the two sat side by side at the study desk.
Bai Yuenian’s desk was much larger than the one in his own room. Nothing extra cluttered the surface; aside from books, there were only stationeries, all arranged in immaculate order.
Right now, however, Tang Yu…slouching over the desk with a tuft of bedhead sticking straight up…seemed to bring a touch of lively everyday chaos to the spotless surroundings.
Tang Yu sulked for a bit.
Then, maintaining his slumped position, he slid sideways toward Bai Yuenian, nudging his arm.
The other boy looked up from his assignment, glanced at him and the test paper that had been dragged along under his body, and without a word, pulled over a piece of scratch paper to write down the step by step solution for the first problem.
“Get it now?” Bai Yuenian asked.
Tang Yu nodded. “Yeah.”
As Tang Yu began copying the answer onto his paper, he suddenly slapped his own forehead. He hadn’t come over today to actually do homework!
Just as he was about to ask another question, Bai Yuenian spoke up: “Try taking notes…write down basic concepts and key problem types. It’ll definitely boost your score on the midterms.”
“Too lazy.” Tang Yu spun his pen playfully between his fingers. “Though, I feel like I’ve seen that note-taking method before. Once, after coming back from PE class, I found a notebook on my desk.”
Bai Yuenian’s pen paused mid-air. “Was the notebook well-written?”
Tang Yu: “Pretty good. The handwriting was neat, and the structure made sense.”
Unnoticed by Tang Yu, the corners of Bai Yuenian’s lips tugged upward into a faint smile.
Until the next second.
Tang Yu continued: “I just had no idea who left it there! I asked a few classmates and nobody claimed it, so I ended up putting it on the teacher’s podium as lost and found.”
Bai Yuenian: “…”
His hand slipped, the tip of his pen tearing right through the scratch paper.
So the notebook he had painstakingly tailored specifically for Tang Yu met that fate!
Tang Yu was completely oblivious to the fact that not only had he failed to get any answers out of Bai Yuenian, but he had also accidentally walked right into a trap.
Remembering that Wu Jianqi had revealed himself as “Minus Two” yesterday, Tang Yu decided to browse the school forum to see if he’d posted anything new. Maybe he could catch a clue about last night, considering Wu Jianqi was there too.
There were indeed new posts on the forum, but they weren’t about yesterday…they were from two days ago.
Someone had posted photos of Tang Yu playing basketball.
In the picture, Tang Yu was wearing a jersey, standing beyond the three-point line, snapping his wrist back in a fadeaway jump shot.
A fine sheen of sweat coated his forehead, dampening his bangs.
Whether it was a filter or beauty mode, the final photo looked like a polished celebrity shot…making him look fair-skinned, rosy-lipped, and ridiculously cute.
He looked way too soft, which didn’t match his self-proclaimed “school delinquent” persona at all. Tang Yu personally disliked the style, but the girls on the forum were going wild over it.
Floor 455: “Captured a wild, adorable Little Tang! He’s so cute I could cry.”
Floor 456: “Tang Yu plays basketball so well! I won’t allow anyone to miss out on this. Major perk of this sports meet. Hurry to the basketball court, the game is super intense, they tied the score in the second quarter! Come cheer them on!”
Floor 457: “Sisters! Bonus perk +1, look what I snapped!”
Floor 458: [Image.jpg]
It was a picture of Bai Yuenian. The referee next to him was ringing the bell, signaling the final lap.
The boy running the 3000-meter race was in the middle of a sprint. His bangs were blown back by the wind, revealing an impossibly handsome face. He looked rare and slightly disheveled, with a patch of sweat dampening the chest of his white t-shirt.
Looking at the photo, Tang Yu noticed something…Bai Yuenian, who had humbly claimed he won first place purely out of luck, was actually half a lap ahead of second place.
You call that luck?! He’s two hundred meters ahead! And second place looked like a recruited student-athlete!
Tang Yu scrolled further down.
Floor 459: “A teenage boy in motion is truly the GOAT. Suddenly Yushen feels so much more relatable and human.”
Floor 460: “Thank you, sister! Yushen was away at a competition during last year’s sports meet, so we never got to see this.”
Floor 461: “This photo is so high-tier! Flush little face aside, I noticed a subtle detail… tears of excitement are drooling out of my mouth.”
Floor 462: “Replying to the above, thanks for the heads-up! Tang Yu baby truly is… basking in so much sexual bliss!”
Tang Yu: ???
Weren’t they talking about Bai Yuenian? How did it get back to him? And why THAT kind of “bliss”?!
Driven by sheer curiosity, Tang Yu reopened Bai Yuenian’s photo.
Pinching two fingers together and spreading them apart, he zoomed in on a specific section of the picture.
A moment later, he slammed his phone face-down onto the desk.
Holy crap!
Why did he zoom in to look at that?! His eyes were officially corrupted!
Honestly, there wasn’t anything explicit in the photo. It was just that the wind from the boy running had outlined a certain subtle curve of his body, barely noticeable beneath the dark blue athletic pants.
…Except beneath that subtle dark blue, it still took up a pretty prominent area! Thinking about it like that, it was actually… fairly impressive.
People on the internet were all armed with microscopes, and this time, Tang Yu had played the role of the magnifying glass.
He couldn’t help but steal a glance toward his side.
The person sitting next to him had incredibly captivating facial features. Tang Yu was a total sucker for good looks, and Bai Yuenian’s striking peach-blossom eyes had nearly entranced him multiple times.
With glasses on right now, he looked even more enticing.
Following the refined jawline down, his white short-sleeved shirt exposed lean, toned arms with a light layer of firm muscle along his forearms.
Tang Yu suddenly remembered the very first time he met Bai Yuenian…the guy had effortlessly lifted him off a fence. His shoulders were surprisingly broad, too.
Oh man.
Is this the standard spec for a novel’s top male lead? Tang Yu felt his face grow hot.
Tang Yu kept sneaking glances. Bai Yuenian was wearing loose white sweatpants today, his long legs resting straight and slightly parted. As for anything else… he couldn’t tell.
Pfft! Tang Yu, do you ACTUALLY want to see it?
Brainwashed by the comments on the forum, Bai Yuenian’s image in his mind instantly transformed from “frail and sickly” to “capable of doing it all night.”
The moment the thought popped into his head, Tang Yu felt an intense aura of tension radiating from Bai Yuenian, and those two words flashed through his mind once more:
“Sexual bliss!”
Tsk tsk tsk!
Right as he was lost in thought, perhaps because he had been staring for too long, Bai Yuenian sensed it. In the next second, his eyes met Tang Yu’s.
Bai Yuenian looked at him, then followed his gaze downward, asking with complete sincerity: “Is there something wrong with my pants?”
Tang Yu: “…”
“N-No, nothing.” Right then, a notification chimed on his phone. In a panic, Tang Yu grabbed his phone from the desk.
However, the zoomed-in photo had not been closed, exposing it completely to Bai Yuenian’s view.
The picture showed only a boy’s slender waist and lower abdomen. You couldn’t tell who it was, but the outline of a narrow waist and long legs was clear…the guy was definitely tall.
The hem of the white T-shirt fluttered lightly, radiating a fresh, youthful aura.
Bai Yuenian: “!!!”
Is Tang Yu comparing me to someone else?
Bai Yuenian quietly glanced down at himself. There was no distinct curve showing under his pants right now…he felt like he had just lost the matchup!