On the way back to class, Tang Yu and Bai Yuenian quickly swapped their school uniform jackets back. Neither of them said a single word throughout the entire process.
Exhaustion completely took over Tang Yu, causing him to sleep through half the next class. For the remaining half, he studied his report card and decided it was time to perform CPR on his dead horse of a grade he had to make a desperate gamble.
He realized moving up a hundred places before the midterm exam wasn’t entirely hopeless. Since his current grades left an astronomical amount of room for improvement, moving up a hundred ranks from the second to last spot in the grade only meant raising his total score to around 350 points. Broken down across all subjects, he only needed to boost each score by about ten points.
Tang Yu felt pretty good about his math. Work hard for a month, transfer to a regular class, get far away from the male lead, and solve all his problems once and for all.
Besides, yesterday’s events had given him a major confidence boost. The incident with Liu Ziyue proved that the future of this world could actually be altered. Aside from a few specific fictional settings, this world was almost identical to his original reality. Because he stepped in, Liu Ziyue had avoided a bloody disaster.
Now that he, a straight guy, had transmigrated into the novel as the main character’s love interest, he had no intention of following the original plot. It wasn’t impossible to avoid falling in love with a guy or ending up having his kids. Maybe if he aced the midterms, he could head straight to Class 13, steer clear of Bai Yuenian, and completely derail the main storyline.
Fired up and ready to study, Tang Yu listened to the physics lecture with sudden enthusiasm.
The result? He couldn’t understand a single word. By the end of the lesson, the only thing Tang Yu had accomplished was doodling a variety of meme faces onto the physics diagram of a rolling ball.
Fine, how about memorizing some English vocabulary? That should be easy enough, right? Fantastic. It almost put him right back to sleep.
His unusual behavior throughout the class didn’t escape Xie Tianyi’s notice. Seeing Tang Yu now locked in a death match with his math textbook, Xie Tianyi finally couldn’t hold back anymore. He leaned in and asked, “Bro, did you just experience a sudden gene mutation? Since when did you find joy in studying?”
“Get lost!” Tang Yu shoved his head away. “Old Liu promised me that if I move up a hundred places by the midterms, he’ll let me transfer to Class 13.”
“Transfer?!” Xie Tianyi’s voice boomed as loud as ever, drawing a wave of curious stares from the rest of the class.
Even Bai Yuenian paused his page-turning for a fraction of a second.
“Bro, you’re something else! Other people study hard to get into the honors class, but you’re working hard just to get kicked out! This reverse operation makes you a true legend at the High School. But seriously, why do you want to transfer?” Xie Tianyi asked.
Tang Yu rolled his eyes at him. “Nobody would mistake you for a mute if you kept your mouth shut.”
Glancing around the room, Xie Tianyi lowered his voice. “If you transfer, it’s going to be way too far for me to come find you.” Class 13 was on the first floor, while Class 1 was up on the fifth. It really was a trek.
Tang Yu thought about it for a moment. “Look on the bright side.”
Xie Tianyi: “Like what?”
Tang Yu: “If you want sweet and sour pork ribs for lunch, I can rush to the cafeteria first and grab them for you!” Being on the first floor meant having the absolute fastest route to the cafeteria.
“Bro, you really are my best friend,” Xie Tianyi said, deeply moved. “You were hanging around Qin Zhan the last couple of days, I thought he was your new favorite.”
Tang Yu thought to himself: Bullshit! Like I had a choice? During the exams over the past two days, Xie Tianyi had been buried in revision. Back then, Tang Yu had just transmigrated and hadn’t even figured out the basic layout of this world yet he couldn’t even find his own house.
In the novel, Tang Yu lived right across the hall from Bai Yuenian. But reality wasn’t playing out that way. If he hadn’t tricked Qin Zhan into leading him to his front door, was he supposed to sleep on the streets?
Although Xie Tianyi had lowered his voice, his words still carried clearly to the back row.
This time, Tang Yu glanced over at Bai Yuenian.
The male lead didn’t seem to react at all. In the novel, Bai Yuenian was the deep, icy type; no one could crack his frozen exterior or evoke any emotion from him except the main character. Even with all this talk about “new favorites” and “old flames,” the guy just kept doing his own thing…
Wait, no. Bai Yuenian looked up. He was staring right at him.
That look! It was exactly like the gaze from their first encounter yesterday just staring at him blankly.
But there was a difference. Yesterday, Tang Yu had simply been stunned by Bai Yuenian’s striking looks. But now… those affectionate peach blossom eyes looked as if they were on the verge of tears, making the beauty mark beneath his eye seem vividly alive.
In an instant, Tang Yu snapped his gaze away. Looking any longer made him feel like he had committed some terrible betrayal against Bai Yuenian.
Damn it! How could a guy look like that?
Usually, Bai Yuenian seemed cold enough to be completely asexual, but the moment he returned a glance, it was overwhelmingly disorienting. Even without a clear expression, Tang Yu could feel the intensity and heat burning in that gaze.
Fortunately, the guy didn’t keep staring. Bai Yuenian stood up and walked out through the back door, leaving a faint breeze in his wake as he passed behind Tang Yu.
Was Bai Yuenian hurt by what I said? Tang Yu suddenly felt the bizarre guilt of a scumbag who had loved and left someone.
He took a deep breath to steady his mind. In the novel, the main characters only shared a mutual, unspoken crush before they turned eighteen. They didn’t officially start dating until the male lead’s eighteenth birthday. Since nothing had even started yet, it was just a mutual crush turning into a one-sided one. He wasn’t abandoning anyone, definitely not!
It turned out that being a heartbreaker required a thicker skin.
With the lingering shock of Bai Yuenian’s gaze still weighing on him, Tang Yu silently chanted a mantra: I’m straight, not gay. I’m straight, not gay. I’m straight, not gay…
Xie Tianyi interrupted his thoughts. “Bro, you can’t force it like this. I suggest starting with biology. It’s not purely conceptual; you’ll definitely boost your score if you just read through it.”
Alright! Biology it is.
Tang Yu pulled a biology textbook from his desk drawer, still muttering under his breath: I’m not straight, I’m gay… I’m not straight, I’m gay…
It took him a good moment to realize what he was actually whispering.
Gross! Pui, pui, pui! Xie Tianyi was absolute poison!
Biology turned out to be much easier to digest, and Tang Yu gradually settled down to read.
Three minutes later, his head dropped onto the book with a heavy sigh. “I’m losing my mind. Why did scientists have nothing better to do than invent so many ploidies? Did they even bother to ask the watermelon’s opinion?”
“Xie Tianyi, tell me,” Tang Yu propped his head up, stretching his aching body after sitting hunched over all afternoon. He asked, “Why are triploid watermelons seedless? Why aren’t they just filled with 1.5 times the normal amount of seeds?”
Xie Tianyi thought he was being incredibly adorable. Tang Yu was a coddled young master who had lived a life of absolute comfort. He frequently threw out lazy gestures without looking messy; instead, he resembled a pampered, elegant cat.
Right now, Tang Yu’s cheeks were slightly puffed out in frustration, and his slender back was stretched perfectly straight as he leaned back.
When Bai Yuenian walked back into the classroom, this was the exact sight that greeted him. The loose school uniform pants clung just enough to hint at the firm curve of his hips, and his T-shirt had ridden up from the stretch, exposing a sliver of fair, pale skin that gave a sensitive little twitch.
Bai Yuenian sat down and picked up his pen to continue practicing problems, but his mind drifted: Does Tang Yu have back dimples?
Over there, Tang Yu was tilting his face up, trying to balance a pen on his puckered upper lip. After several failures, he repeated the question. “Won’t people mix up all these ploidies? The book mentions some nonsense about chromosome malfunction making triploid watermelons seedless, but I don’t get it. Can someone explain it in a language I actually understand so I can memorize it?”
Xie Tianyi: “…”
If he told Tang Yu that this question was as basic as asking why 1+1 equals 2, would he get punched? He wasn’t the psychic living in Tang Yu’s stomach; how was he supposed to know what explanation would click?
Out of options, Xie Tianyi tapped the shoulder of the girl sitting in front of him. “Why are triploid watermelons seedless? Don’t use textbook terms give an explanation that Tang Yu can actually understand.”
The girl had overheard their conversation. Not knowing how to translate it for the class troublemaker either, she shook her head and passed the question along to the student next to her, completely unchanged.
The invincible Tang Yu, strongest on earth! With one simple question, he had managed to stump the top academic minds of Class 1.
Like a game of telephone, the question passed through four or five students before it finally went through Wu Jianqi and landed on Bai Yuenian.
The students in the front rows all thought the same thing: Will the great God Bai pass it along to someone else too? But with only Xie Tianyi sitting to his other side, the question would just loop right back to Tang Yu!
Bai Yuenian scanned the curious faces around the room, then turned his gaze toward the seat to his right. He parted his lips slightly: “Maybe because…”
Was Bai Yuenian actually going to answer? In a way the troublemaker could understand? The students grew even more curious.
The low, resonant voice of the youth sounded: “Because… a love triangle can only drive them to a drama, it can’t lead them to a delivery room.”
Tang Yu sat up straight, poking his head out from behind Xie Tianyi’s shoulder to continue pressing Bai Yuenian: “Then why do hexaploids and octaploids have seeds?”
Bai Yuenian pushed up his glasses, thought for a moment, and replied, “When there are too many rivals in love, some of them are bound to attract each other.”
Those two sentences struck Tang Yu like a lightning bolt of clarity. He raised his hand with a bright grin. “I’ve got it memorized!”
The surrounding classmates were completely floored: Holy crap! That actually worked? Come to think of it, that analogy is surprisingly accurate.
Is this what they call couple’s intuition? Is the class rebel only teachable by God Bai? And hearing the usually ethereal, detached God Bai say something so… down-to-earth! It was incredibly out of character, yet carried a strange hint of indulgence.
The next period belonged to Sister Min. The female teacher, who loved arriving early, walked in clutching her lesson plans.
Coming from the faculty office, she was closest to the classroom’s back door. Plus, she always liked to launch a surprise attack through the back to catch any students secretly playing on their phones.
Following her usual routine, Zhou Fangmin crept quietly up to the back door, only to find it shut tight! She grabbed the handle and yanked it wouldn’t budge.
Forced to enter through the front door instead, Zhou Fangmin lightly tapped the lectern to get everyone’s attention. “Who closed the back door? Didn’t I say it needs to stay open?”
Tang Yu turned around to look. The usually busy back door was indeed firmly shut.
Whispers immediately broke out across the room.
“Oh my god! I was literally on my phone just now! Thank goodness it was shut. Bless whoever did that.”
“That person has some serious guts. Last time someone shut the back door, they were forced to copy ‘A Free and Easy Wandering’ ten times. Your savior is doomed.”
“Who actually did it?”
“Teacher, it was me,” Bai Yuenian’s voice rang out, sparking a wave of gasps through the classroom.
“Bai Yuenian?” Zhou Fangmin looked equally astonished.
Bai Yuenian maintained his usual expressionless face. “The temperature dropped today, and there’s a draft. It gets cold sitting in the back row.”
“…”
What Bai Yuenian said wasn’t wrong. To make sleeping during class easier, Tang Yu had swapped seats with Xie Tianyi, putting him closest to the back door. The hallway always carried a chilly breeze, and if the door stayed open, it blew right in. It really was cold…cold enough to make him sleep through two entire periods.
But wait! Bai Yuenian’s seat was a good three or four meters away from the back door. Even if a draft reached him, it would be incredibly faint. How cold could he possibly get?
It looked like the male lead truly possessed a frail and delicate constitution! He caught a chill yesterday, and today it seemed even worse!