When reading the first volume, Wen Ying could only see blurry images and text, but this time it had turned into clear moving scenes.
The confusion in his mind lasted for only a fleeting second before he blinked and returned to reality.
[Your Highness…]
Wen Ying lowered his head, only to discover that the teacup beside his hand had tipped over at some point, and warm tea was trickling steadily across his fingertips.
Silently, he pulled out a tissue and wiped away the liquid completely before it could drip onto the floor.
“I’m fine.”
His voice sounded wooden, not at all like his own.
The tilted teacup could be set right, but Wen Ying could no longer return to the state of total ignorance he had been in one minute ago.
He had witnessed a plot development even worse than he had imagined.
The opening of the second volume featured a tug-of-war between the male and female leads.
Upon learning Wen Yingying’s true gender, Huo Jueyue, who couldn’t keep anything to himself, neither wanted to drop his young master’s pride nor could resist testing her.
So, using his parents’ invitation as a cover, he picked a day when his parents wouldn’t be home and invited Wen Yingying over to his house.
Out of consideration for their elders’ faces, mixed with a dash of his own burgeoning true feelings, the naive Wen Yingying agreed.
This opening immediately made Wen Ying feel uneasy.
Even under the pretext of love, this remained an extremely dangerous deception.
“Now that Huo’s father is inviting me to the Huo family residence, it’s likely replacing the invitation Huo Jueyue extended to Wen Yingying in the plot.”
Wen Ying tossed the tissue into the trash can and reached his conclusion.
[My thoughts are quite similar to yours, Your Highness.]
The gentleman sighed softly, his tone laced with worry.
[Even if the Huo family members claim that Huo Jueyue is not at home, once you go over there, you will still likely cross paths with him.]
The sequence of events following that encounter was even worse.
That day, the atmosphere between Huo Jueyue and Wen Yingying was ambiguous, with frequent physical contact. They even baked a cake together under the guise of surprising Huo’s mother.
Flour and strawberry jam soiled Wen Yingying’s masculine clothes, and Huo Jueyue smoothly used the opportunity to invite Wen Yingying into the dressing room.
“Go ahead and change yourself. Any of these clothes will fit you anyway.”
Wen Yingying searched for a long time without finding any men’s clothing; seeing the beautiful dresses inside the dressing room made her heart itch with temptation.
She put on a dress, but the zipper on the back got stuck.
With only the two of them in the empty, massive mansion, Wen Yingying had no choice in her desperation but to call Huo Jueyue for help.
Huo Jueyue came in.
Thanks to the R-18 attributes of this book coming into play, this scene did not devolve into anything unbroadcastable.
Huo Jueyue was struck dumb by her beauty, and after freezing for a moment, he zipped up the dress for her.
Amidst the moonlight, the young girl wore a dress while leaning against the windowsill, her feet in dance shoes, the long hem trailing on the floor, and her crown-like hair accessory gleaming brightly, looking just like a princess waiting for her sweetheart.
Meanwhile, Huo Jueyue stood beside her with a bright red rose hidden behind his back, though he never ended up giving it to her.
From that moment on, the two shared a tacit secret.
It looked like a very romantic plot.
Yet from the cause, the process, to the result, it all made Wen Ying feel deeply uncomfortable.
This was not perfect love.
Even though he didn’t understand love at all, Wen Ying was completely certain of that.
The male and female leads would meet again after returning to school.
Their relationship heated up rapidly, and Huo Jueyue stopped using teasing as a way to amuse the female lead, instead displaying a much more obvious sense of possessiveness.
At the same time, Gu Xiche, the most observant of them all, also discovered that Wen Yingying’s gender might have been faked.
He invited Wen Yingying up to the rooftop to have a heart-to-heart talk, but it only made Wen Yingying mistakenly believe that Gu Xiche was going to expose her, scaring the female lead into fleeing in a panic.
As luck would have it, she once again tumbled right into Huo Jueyue’s arms.
“Shorty.”
In the dim corner of the stairwell, Huo Jueyue’s voice was lazy.
He covered her mouth and smiled evilly, “Can I kiss you?”
Wen Ying: ……
What a terrifying story trajectory.
Triggered, he forced his brain to skip past a long string of sweet pet romance tropes.
Ignoring the campus light-comedy shenanigans surrounding the revelation of the heroine’s secret that filled half the book, the next crucial plot point lay at the end of the second volume.
During the autumn sports meet, Wen Yingying witnessed Qu Huo, who had disappeared for several days, appear covered in injuries in the small woods behind the equipment room.
The cause of his injuries remained unknown.
To find out what happens next, tune in to the next installment!
Thinking of that mischievous line of text on the last page of the second volume, Wen Ying felt anger flaring in his chest.
He was starting to hate authors who liked to end chapters right at the climax of the plot.
Even knowing it wasn’t appropriate, he stubbornly muttered, “I want to read the third book.”
[Your Highness, your forehead is covered in sweat.]
The gentleman immediately began to dissuade him.
[If you want to read the plot of the third volume, you’ll have to wait at least half a month.]
Wen Ying calmed down a little, “Then tell me, how did Qu Huo get injured?”
The mere thought that in half a month he would encounter someone covered in blood at school, and that this person happened to be Qu Huo, who brought him meals every day, meant he wouldn’t need to sleep for the next two weeks.
[As you command, Your Highness.]
[According to the description at the beginning of the third book, he got into a fight with someone.]
A fight?
Wen Ying was puzzled.
Putting aside the fact that they were supposed to be studying properly, why would Qu Huo get into a fight with someone? Furthermore, given Qu Huo’s physical fitness, unless he was being held down by ten people, it was impossible for him to be beaten up this badly.
[However, this is merely the reason given in the book.]
The gentleman continued.
[Later on, Huo Jueyue dragged the terrified female lead away, and when they saw Qu Huo again, he was already back to acting like nothing had happened.]
“Didn’t they call the school infirmary?”
[No.]
The gentleman thought carefully.
[Perhaps the author didn’t pay attention to such details.]
“This isn’t a detail.”
Wen Ying found it incredible.
Even if someone he hated like Huo Jueyue was lying on the roadside at his last gasp, he would still pinch his nose and dial emergency services.
To leave a living person abandoned like that in the woods, what if he had died?
[You know as well as I do that textual descriptions contain a heavy amount of subjectivity, and they often favor one side over the other.]
[Therefore, I believe Qu Huo’s injuries are not as simple as the book claims. There should be hidden circumstances behind them, only the main plot didn’t dig deeper.]
“So I still have to investigate it myself.”
Wen Ying covered his eyes, exhausted both physically and mentally.
He was truly terrified by the wounds on Qu Huo’s body; this didn’t feel like a plot point that belonged in an R-18 campus novel.
So did R-18 just mean explicit content while ignoring everything else?
“I’m going to take a shower.”
When in doubt, take a shower. After a long moment, Wen Ying dragged his exhausted body upright.
[Very well, I wish you a pleasant time.]
The gentleman consciously shut down.
[Good night, my dear little Highness.]
He wouldn’t be having a good night, however.
Staring at the bobbing little yellow duck in the bathtub, Wen Ying buried the lower half of his face in the water and blew a string of irregular bubbles.
The good news was that everything was changing for the better.
The bad news was that this world was truly terrible.
Dragging himself out while wrapped in a bathrobe, he saw that the clock pointed to half past eleven.
Inside the messaging app, Huo Jueyue had sent his usual, nutritionally empty messages as expected.
Huo Jue: [Tap tap]
Huo Jue: [Are you there?]
Wen Ying scrolled down with a blank expression.
Even if he played dead, Huo Jueyue would just pretend he was there anyway.
Huo Jue: [There’s a car racing competition this Saturday and Sunday at Mingqiu Mountain. Do you want to come watch me race?]
It was followed by a grinning emoji.
The further down he looked, the paler Wen Ying’s cheeks, which had been flushed by the steam earlier, became.
Having finally managed to recover from the bloody imagery, he was once again reminded of the scene where Wen Yingying tumbled into Huo Jueyue’s arms while Huo Jueyue flashed his crooked, evil smile.
For a split second, Wen Ying actually preferred to think of Qu Huo, whose school uniform had a few tears in it, looking disheveled with blood staining his chest.
At least Qu Huo wouldn’t randomly pin him against a wall with an evil, crooked smile out of nowhere.
Besides, Qu Huo’s injuries were all surface-level, and getting him to the hospital in time would avoid any lasting consequences.
Wen Ying’s thoughts wandered wildly.
Starting today, he was going to stay even further away from Huo Jueyue.
If the gentleman were still here, he certainly would have comforted his little Highness by telling him there was no need to worry too much about Huo Jueyue.
After all, if Huo Jueyue dared to come over and harass him, Wen Ying could rely purely on muscle memory to break his bones.
Yet the gentleman was absent, leaving Wen Ying stranded in a torrential downpour of utterly absurd plot developments, unable to extricate himself.
Ignoring him, Wen Ying switched screens at lightning speed and tapped open Gu Xiche’s chat box.
The boy with the little deer avatar had sent him a document.
Please submit homework in the correct format: [Science Third and Fourth Units.doc]
Please submit homework in the correct format: [Here is the outline you wanted!]
It was followed by a little wildflower emoji.
Ying: [Thank you.]
He decided to redirect his conflicts into his studies.
Forcing himself to read the outline for a bit, Wen Ying spotted a subtle data error amidst the dense blocks of text.
He screenshotted the mistake and sent it to Gu Xiche, who replied almost in seconds.
Please submit homework in the correct format: [It really was wrong.]
Please submit homework in the correct format: [Thanks to your keen eye, otherwise the outline I sent my younger sister would have had issues too.]
Afterward, Gu Xiche sent him a corrected document.
Gu Xiche’s younger sister, Gu Xili, was the campus belle at the neighboring girls’ school, a fact Wen Ying had known for a long time.
Originally, it was just a normal piece of conversation, but the current Wen Ying had been driven somewhat neurasthenic by the plot.
Mentioning a younger sister made him think of girls.
Mentioning girls made him think of girls’ schools.
Mentioning girls’ schools made him think of dressing up as a boy.
“Disguising yourself as a boy must actually be very hard, right?”
Gu Xiche’s words from the book echoed repeatedly in his mind like 3D surround sound, and Wen Ying’s eyes gradually grew vacant.
In a flurry of panic, he sent Gu Xiche an emoji of a polite smile, followed immediately by going to bed and turning off the lights in one seamless motion.
He didn’t even care that his freshly blown hair was still slightly damp.
He was acting far too bizarre right now, and it was all the fault of this book’s terrible main plot.
Self-deceptively, Wen Ying closed his eyes.
One hour later.
1:00 AM.
Wen Ying clutched the pillow beside him tightly and opened his eyes with a cold stare.
He couldn’t sleep at all.
After lying frozen for a few minutes, he fished out his phone from the bedside table, having set it to Do Not Disturb. The pale light from the screen made half of Wen Ying’s face look entirely lifeless.
He had to face his inner demon head-on, that most detestable Huo Jueyue.
He tapped on the keyboard, the words typed by his chilly fingers just as cold.
Ying: [Been very busy lately, unable to attend any events.]
This statement was actually quite cold, but only a fool would try to reason with Huo Jueyue.
After sending the rejection, Wen Ying felt much more at ease inside.
Yet he still felt something was amiss.
Sporting a mess of ruffled pink hair, Wen Ying turned on his bedside nightlight and sat up, hugging a cat-headed pillow that had been temporarily squished out of shape as he pondered for a moment.
He experienced an epiphany.
Switching contacts, he tapped open his chat box with Qu Huo.
He began editing a message.
Qu Huo was the only person who wouldn’t think he was acting strange even if he said inexplicable things.
Wen Ying’s brain was a complete mess; he deleted and rewrote his words of concern multiple times without sending them, until they finally reduced to a single short line.
Wen Ying: [You haven’t offended anyone lately, have you?]
Right after sending it, Wen Ying recalled the message within ten seconds.
No, that wouldn’t do.
It sounded like a threat; a normal person wouldn’t be able to make sense of it.
So annoying!
With such bizarre prophecies, he had no idea how to even bring it up.
Wen Ying sank back into the soft mattress, looking like an egg yolk sinking into egg whites.
Who would have guessed that the very next second, a new message would pop up in the chat box?
Qu Huo: [No.]
Wen Ying: .
So late at night, and he’s still awake…
Wait, receiving a message like this in the middle of the night, don’t you find it strange at all???