“I really have awakened a superpower.”
The moment Li Xingchuan pushed open the door to the private KTV room, those were the words that greeted him.
He stepped back two paces and raised his head to glance at the number above the door: A108. After confirming that he hadn’t come to the wrong room, he pushed the door open once again and walked inside.
The KTV room was illuminated in full-on party mode, with the lights turned up to their most dazzling setting. The disco ball hanging from the ceiling spun beneath the flashing lights, its brilliant, shifting reflections making people’s heads spin. The faces of the young men and women inside were blurred beneath the constantly changing colors, leaving everyone looking somewhat indistinct in the dim, chaotic glow.
Colorful balloons decorated the walls and seats, while a long banner stretched across half the room. In large, unmistakable characters, it read: “Class 1, Senior Year! Happy Graduation!”
It was a graduation party for a group of vibrant, youthful high school graduates.
The moment Li Xingchuan arrived, he attracted the attention of most of the girls in the room.
He wore nothing more than a simple white short-sleeved T-shirt. His features were handsome, and his expression was calm and indifferent. Amid the dim, dazzling spectacle of lights that seemed almost designed to bewilder the senses, he looked remarkably clean-cut and bright, standing out from the atmosphere around him as though he didn’t quite belong there.
A classmate standing beside the microphone stand spotted him and grinned. “Brother Chuan, why are you just standing at the door?”
Li Xingchuan walked over to the nearest sofa and sat down. “I just heard someone talking about ‘awakening a superpower.’ I thought I’d accidentally stumbled into some cult recruitment session, so I didn’t dare come in.”
The moment those words left his mouth, the entire room erupted into laughter.
Meanwhile, Wang Wenyuan, the person who had claimed to have awakened a superpower, immediately darkened his expression.
“You might not believe me, but this really is something extraordinary…”
“Wang Wenyuan is seriously amazing!”
“And his abilities are just as outrageous as a superpower!”
“We’ve been playing against him for more than ten minutes, and not one of us has managed to beat him even once!”
Several classmates crowded around Li Xingchuan, chattering excitedly as they tried to explain the situation to him.
Li Xingchuan had absolutely no idea what was going on, but seeing how delighted everyone seemed, he naturally had no intention of ruining their fun.
So he lazily lifted his eyelids and glanced in their direction. Then, without much enthusiasm, he gave them a thumbs-up and played along. “Impressive.”
Wang Wenyuan’s expression grew even more displeased.
Deliberately raising his voice, he announced loudly, “Anyone else want to play rock-paper-scissors with me? Best of three! If you can beat me, I’ll give you a hundred yuan. If you lose, you have to drink half a glass of beer!”
The prospect of earning a hundred yuan so easily was enough to rekindle the interest of several classmates who had previously seemed rather indifferent. They immediately perked up and gathered around him.
Wang Wenyuan thoroughly enjoyed being the center of attention. The more people focused on him, the more exaggerated his gestures and expressions became.
He won another two rounds of rock-paper-scissors, and amid the surrounding gasps of astonishment, he broke into a smug, triumphant grin before turning provocatively toward Li Xingchuan.
Li Xingchuan, however, hadn’t paid him the slightest attention. He was holding a bottle of orange-flavored sparkling soda in one hand, searching the table for a bottle opener.
He looked around for a while but couldn’t find one.
And since he couldn’t be bothered to ask anyone where it was, he simply took the bottle, pressed its cap against the edge of the table, and struck it against the hard surface.
With a sharp psst, the cap popped off. He had opened the bottle with one hand, the movement so fluid and effortless that it was impossible to describe his casual, unhurried elegance as anything other than effortlessly cool.
He hadn’t said a word or done anything to draw attention to himself, yet the female classmate sitting beside him couldn’t help looking impressed, her eyes lighting up with admiration.
Wang Wenyuan: “…”
What a show-off.
Although tonight was supposed to be a graduation party, the atmosphere wasn’t all that different from an ordinary class gathering. The students who were already close to one another had naturally formed their own little groups, sitting together in their respective circles. There was no sign that anyone intended to break down those social barriers just because it was their last night together.
Luo Song, who had been standing beside the microphone stand singing just moments ago, finished his performance and made his way over to Li Xingchuan.
Luo Song’s nickname was “Luo Song Tang,” which literally meant “borscht.” As it happened, his mother really did have the surname Song, making his full name and nickname a rather amusing play on similar-sounding words that shared the same origin.
He was on the stockier side and had a habit of wearing clothes in various shades of red. From a distance, he looked just like a festive Harbin red sausage.
This very sausage cast a disdainful glance at Wang Wenyuan, who was surrounded by a crowd of admirers, before dropping into the seat beside Li Xingchuan and lazily crossing one leg over the other.
“Brother Chuan, why didn’t you come to dinner tonight?” Luo Song asked.
Li Xingchuan explained, “I went to pick up a friend, so I didn’t make it in time.”
His answer was brief and vague. Luo Song thought about it for half a second before suddenly realizing something. “Oh, that childhood friend of yours?”
Li Xingchuan nodded. “He’s back for the summer vacation.”
All the friends who were relatively close to Li Xingchuan knew that he had a childhood friend with whom he had a good relationship, someone who attended school in the capital. His family was quite well-off, and every summer, he would return to Yucheng to spend his vacation.
However, nobody knew what Li Xingchuan’s childhood friend actually looked like. They weren’t even entirely sure of his full name. Whenever he came up in conversation, they jokingly referred to him as the “Beijing Young Master.”
Luo Song knew a little more than the others. For instance, he knew that the childhood friend’s surname was Ji, that he apparently wasn’t in the best of health, and that he had a rather introverted personality and didn’t like going out much.
Luo Song asked casually, “Where does he want to go to university? Is he planning to study abroad?”
Li Xingchuan pondered the question. “Now that you mention it, I really haven’t asked him.”
Before the college entrance examination, he hadn’t touched his phone at all. He had completely cut himself off from the internet for three whole months, during which he had answered only one call from his own mother, let alone contacted anyone else.
Li Xingchuan took a sip of his soda, opened his social media app, and deftly located a contact in his message list: Ji Wangcheng.
For all these years, Ji Wangcheng had continued using the default profile picture: a black-and-white penguin wearing a red scarf. There was something indescribably goofy about the little penguin. At the moment, his status showed that he was [Online via 4G].
Li Xingchuan: [Poke]
Li Xingchuan: [Where are you planning to pursue your higher education when the new semester starts in September?]
The other party replied instantly.
[C]: ?
Li Xingchuan: [Where are you planning to put down as your first choice?]
The other person casually tossed the question right back at him.
[C]: [What about you?]
Li Xingchuan answered without a moment’s hesitation.
Li Xingchuan: [Obviously Yuda. If you’re from Yucheng, you go to the local university.]
His answer was decisive, although, in reality, he wasn’t particularly confident that he would get in.
[C]: Mm.
[C]: Me too.
Li Xingchuan raised his eyebrows slightly.
With Ji Wangcheng’s academic performance, he could actually aim for even more prestigious universities.
While Li Xingchuan was replying to Ji Wangcheng’s messages, the atmosphere inside the private room was gradually heating up.
Nobody was singing the songs they had queued up. The microphones had been tossed aside, leaving only the original vocals reverberating through the speakers, providing background entertainment for everyone.
A group of freshly graduated high school students had enthusiastically crowded around Wang Wenyuan, seemingly gathered to witness some once-in-a-century spectacle. One moment, they had been composed, respectable prospective university students; the next, they had degenerated into a bunch of shrieking, hollering baboons. The KTV room had officially become a zoo.
“Eighty-three…”
“That makes eighty-four rounds now, right?”
“Holy shit, he won again! Wang Wenyuan, you absolute badass!”
Anyone who didn’t know better might have thought the group was gambling, so completely consumed by the thrill of winning that they couldn’t tear themselves away.
A closer look, however, revealed that Wang Wenyuan was simply on an astonishing winning streak at rock-paper-scissors, leaving everyone around him utterly dumbfounded.
Li Xingchuan: “…”
It was genuinely difficult to believe that these people were students from a key high school class.
Luo Song was equally contemptuous. Lowering his voice, he muttered, “Are they idiots? What’s so amazing about winning a few extra rounds of rock-paper-scissors? That habitual show-off is just making a spectacle of himself to grab everyone’s attention.”
Li Xingchuan found it difficult to disagree.
Luo Song sneered. “I’m going over there to see what he’s made of.”
With that, Luo Song squeezed his way into the crowd of onlookers as well.
Two minutes later, another message arrived from Ji Wangcheng.
[C]: When will it be over?
Li Xingchuan: [No idea. I’ll sneak out early. Around eight or nine, probably.]
[C]: Oh.
Li Xingchuan jokingly asked, [What, are you planning to come pick me up later?]
[C]: Mm.
[C]: Okay.
With that goofy penguin profile picture paired with those replies, Li Xingchuan could practically picture Ji Wangcheng sitting there with a perfectly serious expression as he typed out his responses.
Everyone said Ji Wangcheng was a child prodigy, a genius. But as far as Li Xingchuan was concerned, the guy could sometimes be unbelievably dense.
He had just been about to type out a reply when Luo Song suddenly came charging back from the other side of the room, letting out a series of ear-splitting shouts.
The very same person who had been loudly ridiculing Wang Wenyuan for showing off just moments earlier was now utterly astonished.
“Fuck! Brother Chuan! I think Wang Wenyuan really does have a superpower!”
Li Xingchuan: “…”
Li Xingchuan: “?”
Seeing the utter disbelief written all over Li Xingchuan’s face, Luo Song hurriedly tried to explain himself, his words tumbling over one another.
“I’m not joking! He’s won more than a hundred consecutive rounds of rock-paper-scissors! Couldn’t he apply for a Guinness World Record for that?! I just played three rounds against him, and I lost every single one…”
Li Xingchuan stared at him with the expression one might reserve for an idiot, vividly embodying the struggle of having something to say but not knowing where to begin.
Luo Song insisted, “Don’t be so skeptical! This could very well be the power of the supernatural! There are so many things in this world that science can’t explain…”
Li Xingchuan replied, “Exactly. Like mental illness.”
Luo Song: “…”
“Anyway! Just go and try it yourself, and you’ll understand!”
Li Xingchuan had absolutely no desire to try.
Admittedly, strange and seemingly unreasonable things did occasionally happen in everyday life. As a result, there was no shortage of people who firmly believed in the power of the supernatural, ranging from billionaires at the top of society to food delivery riders at the very bottom. Even the most devout materialists, deep down, tended to harbor at least a sliver of reverence for ghosts and gods.
Li Xingchuan, however, had always held such supernatural nonsense in contempt.
The reason was simple: his mother was a self-proclaimed “fortune-telling shaman” who charged clients by the minute to read their fortunes. If she encountered a wealthy customer, she would even raise her prices on the spot. All she had to do was sit at home making phone calls all day, and she could easily earn several thousand to over ten thousand yuan in a single day.
Madam Li’s business covered an astonishingly broad range of services. She could help clients replenish their wealth and improve their financial fortunes, ward off petty troublemakers and malicious rivals, and even settle debts owed to the spirits of the deceased. On top of that, she claimed she could treat infertility.
If the treatment worked, it was proof that the shaman possessed extraordinary, almost heaven-defying powers. If it didn’t, well, that simply meant the shaman had done everything she could and the client had been out of luck. Sooner or later, there was always going to be someone whose problem she happened to solve by sheer coincidence, like a blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse. Thanks to those occasional lucky hits, her reputation gradually spread.
Li Xingchuan knew perfectly well how his own mother made her living by deceiving people and peddling fraudulent claims. Consequently, he had never believed in anything remotely associated with the supernatural.
He was much like the unscrupulous manufacturers behind unregulated, no-name facial masks, who would never dream of using their own products.
However, although Li Xingchuan had no intention of getting involved in any trouble, that didn’t mean trouble wouldn’t come looking for him.
Another ten minutes or so passed. By then, Wang Wenyuan had defeated practically everyone in the class at rock-paper-scissors. When he noticed that Li Xingchuan was still sitting there as calmly as ever, completely unmoved by the commotion and absorbed in his phone, he finally couldn’t hold himself back any longer.
“Is there anyone else who wants to put an end to my winning streak?” He pretended to survey the room, then deliberately provoked Li Xingchuan in a joking tone. “Oh? Brother Chuan doesn’t want to join in? Afraid you’ll lose so badly it’ll be embarrassing?”
Li Xingchuan finally raised his eyes and gave him a proper look.
He had never gotten along with this guy. Wang Wenyuan always spoke in an unpleasantly sarcastic, passive-aggressive manner, yet he never dared to confront anyone directly and preferred to gossip behind people’s backs. He was exactly the kind of person Li Xingchuan looked down on the most.
Li Xingchuan shrugged. “Yeah. I’m afraid you’ll lose so badly you’ll start crying.”
Wang Wenyuan choked on his words. The corner of his mouth twitched before he forced out a fake smile. “Then why don’t you give it a try?”
And so, an intense rock-paper-scissors showdown was officially underway in the KTV room.
Wang Wenyuan declared, “I won’t take advantage of you. One round decides the winner.”
Li Xingchuan had no objections.
The two of them sat directly opposite each other, with a table separating them.
Luo Song looked from one to the other before letting out a sigh. Turning to Li Xingchuan, he said, “He’s been winning all night. There’s something seriously fishy about it. You’d better not underestimate him.”
The classmates standing around them nodded solemnly, as though they were witnessing something of the utmost importance. This was where the advantage of being popular really showed itself. Even before Li Xingchuan had lost, everyone had already prepared a graceful way for him to retreat, just waiting for him to take the offered exit once the round was over.
“We didn’t believe it at first, either!”
“Brother Chuan, you just haven’t experienced it for yourself yet. You’ll understand in a moment.”
“It’s fine, Brother Chuan. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. None of us have managed to beat him!”
Li Xingchuan: “…”
What the hell was this? Was there any need to make such a big deal out of it, as though he were about to sit for the college entrance examination? It was just a game of rock-paper-scissors!
The class monitor stretched out an arm and assumed the role of referee with great seriousness. He looked so official that he was practically missing only a whistle hanging around his neck.
“Three, two, one—!”
The moment the words left his mouth, both players threw their hands forward.
Li Xingchuan chose paper.
Wang Wenyuan chose rock.
The entire KTV room fell utterly silent. Half a second later, the silence erupted into a thunderous uproar.
“Woooahhh!!”
“Fucking awesome! As expected of Brother Chuan!!”
Meanwhile, Wang Wenyuan’s expression froze completely. He stared blankly at his own hand, looking as though he simply couldn’t accept the reality of his defeat.
Li Xingchuan, on the other hand, was thoroughly baffled.
As far as he was concerned, the world record for consecutive stone skips was already somewhere in the two- to three-hundred range. Winning a hundred or so consecutive rounds of rock-paper-scissors was nothing more than a matter of having particularly good luck. It hardly qualified as anything worth being astonished over, much less something that could be associated with a so-called superpower.
Perhaps his classmates simply hadn’t outgrown their adolescent phase of chūnibyō fantasies. Their heads were still filled with all kinds of bizarre and outlandish ideas, and this was just another opportunity for them to indulge in their imaginations.
Li Xingchuan looked Wang Wenyuan up and down, then asked with a hint of pity, “How much have you had to drink?”
Wang Wenyuan was still staring at his palm in a completely dazed state, as though his soul had temporarily left his body. He couldn’t even manage an answer.
A male classmate beside them burst out laughing. He turned the red can in his hand around, revealing the cartoon character printed on it. “He hasn’t been drinking. He’s been having Wangzai milk.”
Li Xingchuan immediately understood. “Oh, so he’s been drinking the white stuff.”
Luo Song: “Pfft!”
Li Xingchuan thought for a moment before adding, “Since you like drinking white stuff so much, why not try Six Walnuts next time? That’s white, too, and it might even help nourish your brain. Two birds with one stone.”
This time, everyone burst into uncontrollable laughter. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the supposedly mysterious superpower anymore.
Wang Wenyuan’s moment in the spotlight had become nothing more than an insignificant little interlude. The guy who had been acting so arrogantly just moments earlier quietly retreated to a corner, not even bothering to queue up another song. He simply sat there in self-imposed isolation, drinking his Wangzai milk.
During the second half of the party, Li Xingchuan gradually became the target of everyone’s attention.
A female classmate who had secretly been in love with him for two years confessed her feelings in a way that was half-serious and half-playful, subtly probing him about whether he had a girlfriend.
Li Xingchuan didn’t catch on at first. However, amid the classmates’ teasing and boisterous encouragement, he noticed the way the girl sitting opposite him kept avoiding his gaze. Only then did he suddenly realize what was happening.
The sharp tongue and quick wit he had displayed while mocking the supposed superpower vanished without a trace. He sat there in a daze for several seconds, genuinely at a loss for how to turn her down gently. In the end, all he could do was punish himself by downing a drink to ease the awkwardness and then let the whole thing pass as a joke.
The girl’s name was Hu Yue. Her heart sank, but she still managed to smile generously on the surface. “Now that’s the spirit! I’ll have another drink with you, then. Here’s to a bright future!”
Li Xingchuan glanced at the whiskey mixed with cola in his glass and immediately thought that this was bad news.
Once again, he silently downed a glass, the alcohol leaving a harsh, bitter sting at the back of his tongue.
Hu Yue returned to her seat. She ran her fingers around the rim of her wide-mouthed glass and said nothing more.
The girls exchanged glances with one another. Determined to help Hu Yue save face, they took turns standing up and finding excuses to toast Li Xingchuan, each excuse more absurd than the last.
“Thanks for lending me your math notes. Come on, let’s have a drink.”
“Here, this one’s for the Pilot pen you lent me last semester.”
“This is for leading our class to the championship in the second-year basketball tournament. You made our whole class proud!”
“And… and this one’s for you walking alone through the dark alley!”
Li Xingchuan couldn’t help laughing. “Sure, I’ll drink. Why don’t you go up there and sing The Lonely Brave for me?”
The girl wasn’t one to back down, either. She really did walk over to the song selection screen and queue up The Lonely Brave, then turned around and clinked her glass against his.
Naturally, the boys, who were always eager to stir up chaos, couldn’t possibly stand by and watch such a lively scene unfold without getting involved. Seeing what was happening, they promptly joined the ranks of those coming up with increasingly creative excuses to persuade Li Xingchuan to drink.
It was a graduation party, and Li Xingchuan didn’t want to offend his classmates by refusing their goodwill. Although he exercised considerable restraint, he still ended up drinking one glass after another.
The cola bucket cocktail was jokingly known as a virginity-losing drink. The cola and fruity flavors masked the taste of the alcohol, making it deceptively easy to drink. At first, there wasn’t much sensation at all; in fact, it even tasted a little sweet.
However, its alcohol content was surprisingly high, and the effects hit hard once they finally caught up with you.
Before long, Li Xingchuan had become so tipsy that his head was swimming. He leaned back against the chair and gradually drifted off to sleep.
Seeing that he had fallen asleep, everyone tactfully stopped bothering him.
He sat there with his arms folded across his chest. The alcohol had brought a faint, rosy flush to his face, lending his fair skin a soft, delicate pinkness. His jawline was sharply defined, and with his eyes closed, he no longer looked as unruly and difficult to approach as he usually did.
Hu Yue, the girl who had just confessed her feelings to him, watched him from nearby. She pressed her lips together, her emotions complicated and difficult to put into words.
After a long while, she finally sighed and said to her friend, “…I wonder what kind of person could ever make him fall in love.”
Her friend tried to comfort her. “He’s just a block of wood. Stop looking at him. The next one will be more obedient.”
Hu Yue smiled faintly. “Forget it. I’ve already said everything I needed to say.”
The clock on the wall gradually crept toward ten o’clock, and fewer and fewer people remained in the private room.
Li Xingchuan was a fairly well-behaved drunk. He didn’t go on a rampage or make a scene when he was intoxicated; he simply fell asleep. The only problem was that, once he was out, he showed no signs of waking up anytime soon.
Luo Song nudged Li Xingchuan’s arm. “Hey, time to get up. If you don’t go home soon, you’ll be left here to wash the dishes.”
Li Xingchuan remained bleary-eyed and completely unmoved by the attempt to wake him.
Luo Song hesitated, wondering to himself, Should I just take him home?
Unlike the others, Luo Song knew the details of Li Xingchuan’s family situation. His parents were divorced, and he currently lived with his maternal grandmother. To keep the old lady from worrying, Li Xingchuan had always made a point of behaving as well as possible, being so obedient that there was practically nothing to complain about. After getting himself this drunk, however, he would have a hard time explaining the situation to his grandmother. The last thing he wanted was to make her worry for nothing.
While Luo Song was still considering what to do, the phone lying on the table suddenly began to ring.
Bzz— Bzz—
The caller’s name appeared on the screen: Ji Wangcheng.
Luo Song picked up the phone and held it beside Li Xingchuan’s ear, shouting loudly, “Wake up! You’ve got a call!”
The drunkard struggled to move his fingers and managed, with considerable difficulty, to swipe the screen and answer.
He was terribly sleepy, and his voice came out so faintly that he could barely get the words out.
“Mm… it’s over…”
“I’m at Holy Night… the one on Qinghui Road…”
“Oh… got it…”
After saying that, Li Xingchuan lowered the phone and promptly went back to sleep.
From those few fragmented words, Luo Song gathered that Li Xingchuan’s childhood friend was planning to come and pick him up. At once, he felt relieved.
The private room had been booked until exactly ten o’clock. Ten minutes later, a server came in to ask whether they wanted to extend their reservation, but everyone declined.
Around a dozen classmates were still left. They made their way toward the lobby in groups of two or three, their conversations filled with reluctance to part. Meanwhile, Luo Song struggled to haul Li Xingchuan over to the European-style sofa opposite the reception desk and prop him up on it.
It was June, the season of the plum rains. Outside, rain had begun to fall, and the already murky darkness of the night was soon swallowed up by a hazy, gray veil.
The sudden shower did nothing to wash away the oppressive heat and stuffiness of summer. Instead, it added an indescribable touch of melancholy to the scene of young people parting at graduation.
There was a decorative moon gate in the lobby, beautifully illuminated by the surrounding lights.
The girls took turns standing in front of the moon-shaped structure to have their pictures taken, determined to preserve a few more memories of their high school days before they went their separate ways.
A few minutes later, a silver Maybach slowly came to a stop in the rain a short distance away.
The rear passenger door opened, and Ji Wangcheng stepped out with an umbrella in hand. His long legs carried him forward in an unhurried stride as he made his way toward the lobby.
Against the dim, gloomy backdrop of the rain, his figure appeared almost ethereal, carrying an air of solitary coldness. Without anyone quite realizing when it happened, he had already drawn several curious glances in his direction.
It wasn’t until he stepped through the entrance that his distant, indistinct silhouette became a tangible person standing right before them.
Ji Wangcheng folded his umbrella with practiced efficiency. His fingers tapped lightly against the black ebony handle, the joints of his fingers sharply defined and strong. At last, the face that had been concealed behind the umbrella emerged beneath the lobby lights.
He had a tall, prominent nose bridge, a sharply defined profile, and a face so exquisitely refined that it was difficult to find even the slightest flaw in his features.
Rainwater rolled off the waterproof fabric of the umbrella, falling in clear droplets onto the floor. The polished marble tiles faintly reflected the silvery glimmer of the falling water.
A gust of wind swept into the lobby as the revolving door turned.
Ji Wangcheng stood there with an indifferent expression, his gaze slowly sweeping across the crowd gathered inside.
The girls who noticed him instinctively held their breath. Even Luo Song, a straight man through and through, had to admit that this guy was exceptionally handsome, with an almost otherworldly air of elegance about him.
He made no unnecessary movements and hadn’t uttered a single word, yet he possessed a natural, effortless sense of distance, as though he were inherently detached from the world around him.
Luo Song thought to himself, Tsk… Where did this young master come from?
The next second, Ji Wangcheng’s gaze landed on Li Xingchuan.
The frostlike indifference in his eyes softened ever so slightly.