“If you didn’t know how to ride a horse, couldn’t you wait until the teacher arrived before riding?” Fu Chen said unhappily to the Omega in front of him. “What if someone got hurt? In the end, wouldn’t the Fu family have to clean up the mess for you?”
“Or are you just dying for the whole school to know about our relationship?” Fu Chen narrowed his eyes slightly, highly suspecting that this Omega had done it on purpose.
Wen Yu was clearly still shaken. His chest heaved violently, and his delicate little face was pale as a sheet.
“I’m sorry for causing trouble.” Wen Yu didn’t get angry at Fu Chen’s reprimand; instead, he apologized softly, and then looked at Fu Chen quite earnestly. “Thank you, Fu Chen.”
The Omega’s eyes were dark and bright. Right now, because he had just narrowly escaped danger, he was still panting lightly. The distance between the two of them was very close, with the Omega pressed right against his chest. Fu Chen could clearly see the small red mole on the Omega’s eyelid, which appeared and disappeared intermittently in the gaps between the Omega’s blinks.
Being stared at by Wen Yu made Fu Chen feel somewhat uncomfortable. He turned his head away and gave a cold snort. “Next time, just wait to get bruised, battered, and sprawled out on your face.”
“Get down,” Fu Chen glanced sideways at Wen Yu.
“Your idioms are pretty good,” Wen Yu affirmed, and then staring straight at Fu Chen, he said. “However, I don’t know how to dismount.”
The two of them stared at each other for a moment, and Fu Chen gave Wen Yu a speechless look.
He nimbly vaulted down from the horse, walked briskly to the front of the horse, firmly grasped the reins, and soothingly placated the animal.
“Good boy, Little Black,” Fu Chen stroked the black horse’s coat, his tone very gentle.
After the black horse calmed down, he looked at Wen Yu with a petulant expression and extended a hand toward him. “Get down!”
Wen Yu grasped Fu Chen’s hand. The Alpha’s hand was a size larger than his own. Fu Chen applied a slight pulling force while his other hand instinctively supported Wen Yu’s waistline. Wen Yu slowly slid sideways off the horse’s back, and when his feet landed firmly on the ground, Fu Chen withdrew his hand as quickly as if he had touched something filthy.
He practically had the word “disgust” written across his face in capital letters.
Fu Chen remounted the horse with athletic agility and looked down at Wen Yu from above. “For the sake of world peace, you’d better not ride horses ever again.”
Having dropped that taunting remark, Fu Chen spurred his horse forward. As Wen Yu watched his retreating back, the phrase “full of vigor and vitality” truly felt like a concrete visualization.
He loved saying obscure things to tick people off, frequently broke out into erratic, cold snorts, and then lost his temper all on his own.
Yet Wen Yu felt that Fu Chen didn’t seem like a bad person after all; he had just acted with a clear conscience and saved him. As expected of Elder Marshal Lin’s grandson, the blood of heroes flowed in his bones, and his graceful poise on horseback could indeed be described as truly full of vigor and vitality.
Wen Yu recalled the information Shen Yazhi had previously shown him regarding Fu Chen, which noted that his maternal grandfather was the former Alliance Marshal, Lin Fengyang.
Wen Yu’s little white horse was subdued by the people who rushed over, and Wen Yu wanted to check if it was hurt. Then, Shuran and another Omega walked toward him.
“Wen Yu, I’m so sorry!” The two Omegas bowed to him, and Shuran said. “Just now, Xiaomin and I were drinking hot water, and when we were playfully shoving each other, the hot water accidentally spilled out and startled your horse. We are truly, terribly sorry!”
So that was it. No wonder the little white horse had suddenly gone out of control; it turned out it had been suddenly scalded by hot water and frightened.
“I’m fine,” Wen Yu said. “Fu Chen saved me.”
“Yeah, yeah, we saw it all just now,” Shuran said. “Fu Chen actually does decent human things every once in a while. It’s so great you’re okay! We’re really sorry for almost causing an accident. Wen Yu, are you free this afternoon? Let us treat you to dinner!”
“No need,” Wen Yu smiled softly and politely declined.
“Oh, alright then,” Shuran said, before pulling her friend Xiaomin away.
Lin Qiaoyue also walked over to offer Wen Yu some concern. “How are you? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”
“I’m fine,” Wen Yu said.
“Are you going to be traumatized by horseback riding from now on?” Lin Qiaoyue joked.
“No,” Wen Yu’s eyes lit up noticeably. “Horseback riding is quite interesting. I’m going to strive for a full score on the final exam.”
Lin Qiaoyue looked at Wen Yu’s intrigued expression with mild astonishment. After all, when he himself had learned to ride, he had taken a couple of falls and didn’t want to look at a horse for a short while, but Wen Yu actually seemed even more enthusiastic.
Wen Yu went over to check on the little white horse. Its expression seemed somewhat aggrieved as it was being lectured by the stable hand.
Wen Yu put in a good word for the little white horse, explaining that it hadn’t lost control on purpose, but had simply been scalded by hot water, and besides, he hadn’t suffered any injuries.
Wen Yu even mentioned that he thought he and the little white horse were paired as partners for the equestrian class, and hoped the stable uncle wouldn’t punish it.
“Little classmate, don’t assume it’s obedient just because it looks tame; horses of this breed have very fiery tempers,” the stable hand said.
“I quite like it, and I think it seems to like me too.” Wen Yu reached out to stroke the little white horse, and it slightly tilted its head to rub against his palm. The gentle friction made Wen Yu’s palm tickle a bit.
“This horse rarely gets this close to anyone. You two really do have an affinity,” the stable hand smiled and said.
After galloping around for a couple of rounds, Fu Chen saw Wen Yu riding that same horse, careening about uninhibitedly without a shred of fear. His legs clamped tightly against the horse’s flanks, and the reins moved as flexibly as a snake in his hands as he skillfully guided the white horse’s direction.
As Wen Yu rose and fell with the horse’s back, the wind whipped through his strands of hair. His eyes were locked firmly ahead, his gaze resolute and burning with passion. He was savoring the thrill of the moment, the corners of his mouth lifting into a rare, slight arc. Fu Chen watched the smile at the corner of Wen Yu’s mouth for a brief second before turning his head away and riding off.
This Omega certainly had quite some nerve.
Not long after the semester started, the monthly exams were approaching. For this reason, Wen Yu had been intensely focused on reviewing recently, studying every night until the early hours of the morning before sleeping.
Fu Chen’s bedroom was right next to his, and he accused Wen Yu of deliberately wasting their electricity bill by keeping the lights on until dawn every single day.
Wen Yu had long since heard that First High School was crouching tigers and hidden dragons with plenty of top-tier students. The results of First High School’s monthly exams came out very quickly, and after taking a single glance at the bulletin board, Wen Yu returned to his seat in silence.
Wen Yu remained depressed the entire day.
He had anticipated that his ranking wouldn’t look too pretty, but he never expected it to look this hideous.
“This time in our class, six students entered the top ten of the grade,” the teacher looked to be in a pretty good mood. “The top three in the grade are all from our class.”
First place went to the class monitor of studies, an Alpha boy from a less privileged family background who was rumored to be a top talent snatched up by the school using a hefty scholarship.
Second place was the class monitor, an Omega girl who lagged behind the monitor of studies by a mere 5 points.
Third and fourth place went to an Alpha and a Beta that Wen Yu wasn’t very familiar with.
Fifth place was Lin Qiaoyue.
Sixth place turned out to be Fu Chen, landing right at tenth in the grade, something Wen Yu hadn’t expected at all.
After all, Fu Chen spent every day sleeping. Could it be that Fu Chen actually locked himself in his room every night to secretly work hard, putting on an act of effortless mastery just to show off, which was why he was always so sleepy and seemed as though he never slept at night?
When the teacher read out Fu Chen’s name, Wen Yu turned his head sideways to stare at Fu Chen, only to see him holding his phone and playing a game.
Fu Chen even wore a mini Bluetooth earbud in his left ear, so tiny that it was completely invisible unless you leaned in close. Wen Yu could see it clearly, but from the teacher’s angle, it was utterly invisible.
Wen Yu ranked right behind Fu Chen: seventh in the class and fourteenth in the grade.
For Wen Yu, this was a particularly difficult pill to swallow. After all, from elementary school through middle school he had always been ranked first in his grade, and on the high school entrance exam, he had ranked first in their district. Yet coming to First High School for the very first monthly exam, he hadn’t even cracked the top ten of the grade. Wen Yu felt genuinely defeated.
This was because he had not only previewed the knowledge for the second year of high school in advance, but had even studied some chapters ahead of time, yet he had still scored this poorly.
The top ten in the grade received a scholarship issued by the school, and students whose overall semester rankings placed them within the top five of their respective classes were also eligible to go on a class excursion organized by the school.
Wen Yu had heard that the location selected by the school last year was City F, and this year it was very likely going to be City F as well.
Wen Yu really wanted to go check it out. Having lived this long, he had never once left City A. He heard that City F bordered the sea and possessed countless enchanting natural landscapes. To many people it might seem like a boring destination, but Wen Yu openly admitted that he simply hadn’t seen much of the world. He had never laid eyes on the ocean even once, and he desperately wanted to see the sea just once.
Most importantly, the school trip was entirely free.
Wen Yu looked over his exam paper from this testing session. His most disastrous subject was mathematics, where he only scored 120 points. Compared to junior high where he constantly scored over 140, and his time at Sixth High where he scored in the 130s, the drop was truly like heaven and earth. As expected, the questions at Sixth High were far too simple; during the exam, Wen Yu had distinctly felt that the questions here were much harder than those at Sixth High.
Out of the corner of his eye, Wen Yu caught a glimpse of his deskmate actually scoring a perfect score.
“What time do you usually go to sleep at night?” Wen Yu couldn’t help asking Fu Chen. Just what hour did he secretly study until to score a perfect grade?
During this period, Wen Yu had been very cooperative in helping Fu Chen stabilize his pheromone levels, his mind entirely occupied with studying hard and making daily progress. Fu Chen treated Wen Yu like air, so the two of them had lived in relative peace for a while.
What time did he go to sleep at night?
What kind of crappy question was that?
Fu Chen gave Wen Yu a suspicious look. Was this guy up to some new trick again? Don’t tell him he wanted to crawl into his bed in the middle of the night.
What was he filming, a ghost movie?
“I don’t sleep at night,” Fu Chen spouted nonsense off the cuff, intending to make Wen Yu give up on that idea. In reality, his sleeping hours weren’t entirely fixed; occasionally he would play games until very late, but most of the time he still went to sleep pretty early.
Actually, Fu Chen hadn’t needed quite this much sleep before. Ever since contracting the Pheromone Disorder Syndrome, Fu Chen had grown somewhat prone to drowsiness.
Before Wen Yu came to live at his house, there were days when he could sleep for fourteen hours, and other days when fourteen hours still didn’t feel like enough.
Compared to before, he was already doing much better now.
Wen Yu looked at Fu Chen with a mixture of surprise, never expecting that Fu Chen actually stayed awake the entire night secretly working hard to score a perfect grade, only to come to school the next day to catch up on sleep and pretend that he didn’t study at all.
How scheming.
The spirited and vibrant Fu Chen took on a brand-new interpretation in Wen Yu’s mind.
So, it turned out Fu Chen liked to score full marks in ways people least expected just to tick them off, while secretly driving himself crazy with relentless hard work behind the scenes.