The Juiciest Gossip
The English teacher had never expected Shi Xu to show up for class.
Whenever he taught, Shi Xu either slept through the lesson or simply vanished. No one could keep him in line, and the school had hinted that it was best to let him do as he pleased.
His father had already found him a top-tier school overseas. All they had to do was send him there after graduation.
When Shi Xu came back in the middle of class, Teacher Xu was interrupted both by the knock at the door and by the distraction it caused among the students. He swallowed his anger and set his textbook down on the desk. “Do you think this classroom is a restaurant? You come and go whenever you please! This is senior year. You don’t want to study, fine, but what about everyone else? If you won’t study, don’t disrupt the people who do. If you’re not in class when it starts, don’t bother coming back!”
The class fell silent. Shi Xu stood in the doorway.
But he’d knocked…
Why was the teacher so irritable? He’d seemed like such a kindly person.
His confusion lasted only a moment before he understood.
He looked at the teacher. Teacher Xu stared right back, looking ready to throw caution to the wind and refuse to let him in even if the heavens themselves came down to intervene.
The school’s administrators were wary of Shi Xu’s father, who had donated a great deal to the school: the basketball hall, the soccer field, and even a small museum that other schools envied.
They’d originally planned to give his son a good education. Instead, he’d turned out to be a spoiled rich kid who slept through class and flew into a temper whenever anyone tried to discipline him.
The school was afraid of being held accountable, so they reported the truth to his father. At first, his father checked on his studies every few days. Eventually, he stopped bothering altogether. By the end, he’d practically made it clear that no one needed to keep an eye on Shi Xu. He’d already found him a university.
So the teachers had learned to let him be.
Teacher Xu had put up with him for a long time, too. Shi Xu didn’t disrupt class, but in the middle of a classroom full of senior students anxiously preparing for their exams, there was always one senior sprawled over his desk asleep. Any teacher would have been lucky not to lose their temper over it.
Watching Shi Xu and the teacher stare each other down at the front of the room, the students barely dared to breathe. The class monitor was ready to step in if things got physical.
Shen Yu watched from his seat. He wasn’t worried in the same way as the other students, but he was worried, too.
After a few seconds, Shi Xu looked at the teacher and bowed obediently. “I’m sorry, sir. My stomach’s been bothering me. I must have eaten something bad yesterday, which is why I’m late. I can stand outside if you’d prefer.”
He started to back out. Teacher Xu’s forceful rebuke had landed like a punch on a marshmallow, and for a moment he didn’t know what to do. Only when Shi Xu turned away did he speak up. “Go sit down. If you’re late again, don’t bother coming into class.”
“All right. Thank you, sir.”
Shi Xu nodded and strolled to the back of the room. He pretended to pick up his book, but as soon as the teacher turned to write on the board, he ducked behind it and looked toward the seat on his right.
Shen Yu looked up from his pencil case and met Shi Xu’s gaze across the aisle. Startled, he snapped the case shut and buried his face in his textbook, his thoughts suddenly far away.
Shi Xu propped his elbow on the desk and tilted his head, watching Little Boss. Seeing how obviously nervous he was, Shi Xu raised his brows and grinned.
Little Boss definitely liked him by now. Otherwise, why would he get so nervous just because Shi Xu looked his way?
Hahahaha.
Shi Xu stayed in high spirits until the last class of the afternoon, when the class teacher sternly called him out by name and criticized him. After the weekend, at Monday’s flag-raising ceremony, he’d have to write a letter of self-criticism and apologize to Classmate Shen Yu.
Shi Xu was baffled. His classmates didn’t dare openly gloat, but they were all delighted to hurry off.
Only Gao Zan dared to come over. “Brother Xu, I told you that loser was trouble the moment he showed up. He was the one who bumped into you, and now they’re making you write a self-criticism? Isn’t it obvious they’re taking his side just because he gets good grades? What era are we living in? Since when do grades decide whether someone’s a good person?”
“Don’t worry, Brother Xu. It’s a small thing. I’ll go warn him in a minute and make him own up to it with the teacher. If he dares to spout one more word of nonsense, I’ll kick him back to his old school.”
Gao Zan ground his teeth, looking fierce, and started off to find Shen Yu.
Shi Xu glanced at him and followed at an easy pace. “What, are you still watching Young and Dangerous?”
“I’m not…”
Gao Zan was confused for a moment, then suddenly caught on. His face lit up. “Brother Xu, were you joking with me?”
“Holy crap, the sun must’ve risen in the west! Brother Xu! I’ll go deal with him right now. Don’t worry!”
Gao Zan charged toward the dormitory building with the grim resolve of a soldier ready to blow up a bunker. Shi Xu hurried after him. “Do you have some kind of grudge against Shen Yu?”
“No. I don’t even know him.”
“Then why are you always picking on him? Jealous because he’s handsome?”
Gao Zan stopped dead, staring in disbelief. At last, he pointed a trembling finger at himself. “I’m jealous…? Brother Xu, that loser… I…”
A thousand furious thoughts raced through Gao Zan’s mind. He almost blurted out, I’m jealous that bastard’s handsome? Are you blind?
But when he remembered who he was talking to, his tongue tied itself in knots, and he swallowed the words.
Shi Xu didn’t need him to finish. Shen Yu was seventeen or eighteen, old enough to know what looked good and what didn’t. He must know how handsome he was, since he saw himself in the mirror every day. There had to be a reason he dressed the way he did. So Shi Xu patted Gao Zan’s shoulder.
“I’m kidding. You’re the handsomest. Number one in the universe, so handsome you could split the heavens.”
Gao Zan had been fuming just a moment ago, but Shi Xu’s reassurance made him forget what he’d been angry about. He eagerly leaned his shoulder toward Shi Xu. “Really, Brother Xu? That’s what you think of me? Is that why you won’t take me on as your underling? You’re afraid I’ll steal the spotlight because I’m too handsome?!”
Shi Xu looked him up and down. Gao Zan had fine features and wasn’t bad-looking: fair skin, big eyes, and the youthful, soft look of a pretty boy. But his hip-hop headscarf made him look so tough and cocky that it clashed with his actual vibe.
Shi Xu had no idea how someone could be so mistaken about himself.
Nor had he known he used to have such a clueless person around him.
He held Gao Zan back by the shoulder with the back of his hand, then said, half conversationally and half as a warning, “I can’t control what everyone does, but if anyone gives Shen Yu a hard time, I’ll deal with them.”
With that, he left.
On the fourth floor of Building B, in room 402, a tall, slender figure stood by the window.
The boy gazed outside with beautiful phoenix eyes and tightly pressed lips. A beam of natural evening light fell across his profile, perfectly outlining his jaw and the clean lines of his face.
It was a stunning face.
A pair of wide-framed glasses sat on the desk, and his hair was tied back carelessly, leaving his smooth forehead bare.
It was the weekend tomorrow. The others in his dorm had all gone home, leaving him alone.
He could relax a little, but what he saw outside kept his lips pressed tight. He stood by the window without moving for a long time.
He knew he wasn’t attracted to boys, but… seeing someone get so close to Shi Xu made him uncomfortable.
The boy, still with a hint of youthfulness about him, turned around and picked up the hair dryer. With his hair no longer covering his features, his face was the kind that would make any girl hit the buzzer.
Shen Yu washed his face once more, then returned to his desk.
Shi Xu’s attitude toward him didn’t seem like displaced anger. If anything, it was so nice that it made him uneasy.
The only connection between them was the accidental collision in the cafeteria last week. Shen Yu had been at the school for a month and had never seen Shi Xu go to the cafeteria before. Then last week, they’d unexpectedly run into each other in a narrow passage with nowhere to avoid one another. Nervous, Shen Yu’s hand had shaken. Someone at the next table must have shoved it, and, by a stroke of bad luck, he’d bumped right into Shi Xu.
Food had spilled all over him. Shi Xu had already been on the verge of losing his temper after hearing from his mother overseas, and that pushed him over the edge. He snatched the tray from Shen Yu’s hands and flung it away, then kicked the table blocking his path.
Shi Xu had stormed off without noticing that the table, easy to knock over, had lurched forward from the force and collided with Shen Yu, who’d been staring after him.
By the time the story reached the teachers, it had become the school’s worst student beating the student with the best shot at becoming provincial top scorer, the school’s brightest hope.
There had been plenty of witnesses, and the whole thing happened so quickly that no matter how you looked at it, Shi Xu had been in the wrong.
Gao Zan’s mention of the incident had brought it all back to Shi Xu.
It gave him a bit of a headache.
Among the things Liu Yuanda had given him from his mother overseas, along with the latest tech that always seemed to reach his hands before anyone else’s, was an invitation.
An invitation from his mother: a wedding invitation.
His mother had remarried.
That was it. There was no going back.
At the time, Shi Xu had been hurting inside. Everyone knew he had a bad temper, that he was spoiled and quick to anger, and no one cared much about what he thought. So how ridiculous was it that his own mother had remarried and sent him an invitation?
After that, he never acted out again. He stopped using arguments and bad behavior at school to get his parents’ attention. There was no point anymore.
Afterward, Shi Xu became very quiet. All he did was sleep.
His memories ended there. Years had passed, and Shi Xu no longer felt a thing. He had nothing left to hope for, so nothing could stir his emotions.
Still… he felt a little down.
So Little Boss wasn’t nervous because he had a crush on Shi Xu. He was just genuinely afraid of him.
Holy crap. Shi Xu was such a sunny, warm-hearted guy, so charming when he smiled that even flowers would be embarrassed to bloom. How could he possibly bully a handsome young man like that?
So how had Little Boss fallen for him in the end? Was it because they’d started out as enemies and somehow fallen in love? Was he a masochist?!
Shi Xu headed to Building C and went back to his dorm.
The single room wasn’t very big, but it had everything: a fairly large bed, a small sofa, and a private bathroom.
Shi Xu’s room was done in dark gray, completely at odds with his youthful appearance. It felt gloomy and morose.
He opened the curtains and looked at the cherry tree below. After all these years, it was the thing he remembered best from senior year.
Like him, it stood alone among the green trees and blooming flowers, facing him across the distance.
The cherry blossoms were in full bloom. It was the only tree covered in pink blossoms amid all that greenery, a particularly poetic sight. Different moods made for different views. For instance, to Shi Xu, this “lonely” cherry tree looked especially romantic.
He decided to make Little Boss a gift as an apology.
He opened the window and jumped down, full of excitement.
*
On Monday, no one got to see the school bully heartthrob apologize.
Instead, they got a piece of shocking news: Shi Xu had jumped off a building!
Well, that did it. He’d never gotten the calls he deserved for all the trouble he caused, but that day his phone showed eight hundred missed calls.
Shi Xu looked at the caller IDs for his dad and mom. It wasn’t that he was still holding a grudge and refusing to answer. He simply didn’t want to.
A whole crowd of teachers called, too, frantic with worry. Even the teacher who’d strongly insisted that the problem student Shi Xu apologize on Monday felt terribly guilty. No one had imagined that the short-tempered boy was so sensitive, so proud, and so fragile.
He’d actually jumped off a building!
Shi Xu looked at the crowd gathered around his hospital bed and wished he could crawl into a hole.
He’d only wanted to pick some cherry blossoms for a DIY project. The second floor wasn’t even that high. Who could have guessed that just after he jumped, a cat would dart out through a hole in the wall and land right where he was about to put his foot?
Shi Xu had been forced to change his landing and sprained his ankle badly. His cry of pain had drawn a crowd of students from the dormitory building, followed by the school doctor, an ambulance, and the school administrators…
For a while, he couldn’t come up with a reason for jumping.
Picking cherry blossoms? With the persona he had now, jumping off a building to pick blossoms might sound even less believable than saying he was bored and wanted to jump for fun.