“Did you hear? Our school has another special admission student. I think he’s coming to report for class today!”
“I’ve heard about it already.” *rubbing hands together in excitement*
“Can you please stop drooling? I can practically smell your anticipation through the screen!”
“How can I not be excited when there’s a new toy to play with? I heard this one is from that slum in the lower harbor, with no background at all, hehe.”
Hehe your Mom, damn it.
Ning Song shattered a piece of mint candy between his teeth as he looked at this post on the school forum. If he really ran into these rich kids at his new school, with his current physique, he wondered how many could he take down.
Just as his slender fingers scrolled past more vulgar comments, he suddenly heard a rough male voice ask, “Ning Song?”
Ning Song looked up and saw a school bus with the words "Easton Boys’ Academy" on it parked in front of him. The uniformed driver was looking at him.
He put away his phone, the gloom in his eyes instantly turning into a smile as he bowed and said, "Hello!"
The driver glanced at the scattered advertisements on the nearby telephone pole and said impatiently, "Your house is so hard to find."
As a driver for Easton Boys’ Academy, this was the first time he had come to a place like this to pick someone up.
This was the most famous slum in Easton Province, right next to the crime-ridden underground city. Driving a school bus with an elite academy logo, he was stared at wherever he went. He had heard that the area was dangerous, so he had been on edge the whole time, and after circling around for so long, he couldn't help but feel a little irritated.
He wanted to vent, but the next second he saw the boy bow and smile, saying, "I'm sorry, I’ve caused you trouble!"
Such a good kid.
He was just too skinny.
He was as thin as a piece of paper, with a pointed chin. His slightly wavy hair looked very soft, and like his eyes, it was brown with a tinge of yellow. He looked malnourished, with pale skin and slightly drooping narrow shoulders. If it weren't for the huge backpack behind him, you could probably see his bony spine. It was already late February, but there had been a cold snap a few days ago, and it had rained a few times. The streets here were so cramped that even sunlight had difficulty coming in, making it feel cold and damp. He must have been waiting for a long time, since his nose was red from the cold, making his face look even more sickly. Surrounded by raggedy homeless people and red-light district advertisements, he made a sight that tugged at the heart.
He couldn't bear to scold a boy like this, so he nodded and said, "Get in."
Ning Song got on, carrying his backpack, and the driver glanced at him again through the rearview mirror, "Special admission?"
Ning Song nodded and looked up, meeting the driver's gaze in the rearview mirror. A subtle expression appeared in the driver's eyes, but in the end, he only said, "That couldn’t have been easy. Congratulations."
Ning Song curved his lips and said, "Thank you."
When he smiled, a shallow crease appeared at the corner of his lips, and there was a poignant touch of vulnerability in his expression. The driver said nothing more and drove towards Easton Boys' Academy.
Ning Song knew why the driver was looking at him like that.
Lucky kids from the slums were few and far between at Easton Boys' Academy.
Although he hadn't read the novel called Gentlemen's Gift, it was incredibly popular, and everywhere he looked, there were spin-offs. His best friend was obsessed with it and constantly tried to get him to read it too. He'd even helped her queue up for merchandise, but it always sold out instantly. In the end, he bought her a collector's edition card game at an exorbitant price on Xianyu for her birthday.
That was the closest he'd come to interacting with this novel.
There were a total of twenty cards, and in the past few days, he had drawn copies of about ten of them from memory.
He pulled the cards out of his pocket and flipped through them one by one.
The boy on the first card looked fierce and wild. The reason he remembered this character so vividly was because of his tattoos.
He thought at the time, Of course he has tattoos, it's a piece of fiction. He'd never seen anyone dare to get a tattoo in a visible place when he was in high school.
Although it was a two-dimensional character, the card still managed to capture the character's features. He was the one with the most rugged physique of all the characters, with a bronzed complexion. He was also the only one on the character cards who wasn’t wearing his uniform properly. Wearing boxing gloves, he looked like a rebellious hoodlum with a bad-boy charm.
At the top of the card was his name, Li You.
His best friend called this character "Squid-ge" and said he was a walking hormone-dispenser, just one step away from being a ruthless gangster.
Below the card was the character description he remembered: Age: 18, Height: 187 cm, Nickname: "Thug in a School Uniform."
He flipped past this card, and a card with a beautiful white-haired boy appeared before him.
His best friend said that this person carried the face value of the entire school.
His name was Sheng Yan. The reason Ning Song remembered the name was because it suited the character perfectly: he was sharp and unrestrained. With black earrings paired against his fair skin, he was as striking as the three 火 flame components that made up his name, 焱 Yan.
The personal information on the card below read: Age: 17, Height: 185 cm, the handsomest boy in the school, one of the five young masters of Easton Academy.
He also remembered a starkly contrasting piece of information about him: he had a ferocious dog, but he named it Girlie.
The next card showed a bespectacled young man, gentle and elegant. Ning Song couldn't remember his name, only that he was the student council president and his best friend's favorite. He could play the saxophone and catch a basketball with one hand—he had everything a campus heartthrob should have.
Girls seemed to prefer the type with a refreshing air.
There was another card showing a similar bespectacled guy, tall and elegant, but with a more arrogant expression. His whole image was refined and mean-spirited, like a proud peacock.
He remembered seeing the term "peacock" in his character introduction.
Two others stood out in his memory. One was because the person looked very much like a girl, incredibly beautiful, but he couldn't remember the name either. He must have been a very pretty shou. The other one he remembered as being very cute, with a small ponytail at the back of his head.
He lacked distinct memories of the rest of the cards. He only vaguely recalled a few details, like one being a dance student, another a basketball player, and a few others being top students. All of them seemed to be over 180 cm tall, and a few even exceeded 190 cm.
He knew this because he had heard his best friend mention “18 guys” and “19 guys.”
This was a BL novel with an ensemble cast. The story took place in an elite high school, but this campus was unlike any he was familiar with in the real world.
Because it was almost entirely a boys' love school, where gay love stories were everywhere!
So, here was the question: What role did he play in this novel world?
He, Ning Song, was a 17-year-old high school sophomore who had transferred from a poor neighborhood to an elite high school through a special admissions program. He was 175 cm tall, weighed just over 100 pounds and had no meat on his ass. Beauty had nothing to do with him.
He didn't have the beauty, the bubble bottom or the height of a typical BL protagonist. He was just a weakling with no sex appeal, who would fall apart if you so much as bumped into him.
He spread out all the cards in his hand, revealing more than a dozen pictures of handsome high school boys.
He was quite sure he wasn't in those twenty main character cards.
He was probably one of the hundreds of supporting characters, cannon fodders or extras among the near-thousand students at Easton Academy, excluding those twenty main characters.
Easton City had fourteen districts, the poorest being the Lower Harbor and the richest being Radiapearl Island. Ironically, these two districts with the largest wealth gap between them were right next to each other, separated only by a bridge over the sea.
As the car left the Lower Harbor, dominated by dilapidated buildings and shantytowns, and crossed the sea bridge into Radiapearl Island, it felt like they were entering a completely different world.
Futuristic skyscrapers and ancient European-style buildings stood side by side, with the towering twin towers of the Asian Federation Twin Spires piercing the sky.
Even the seawater in this wealthy district seemed bluer than that of the Lower Harbor.
This was his first time entering the wealthieset district of Easton Province, and Radiapearl Island truly was like a pearl embedded in the sea.
This was a strange world with a huge wealth gap, where assets were almost entirely monopolized by conglomerates. It was a world of the rich, which he, a poor student from a slum, had never experienced.
An hour later, they arrived at No. 1 St. Michael Avenue, and through the car window, he saw the grand gate of Easton Boys' Academy.
The ancient Roman-style gate had granite columns engraved with roses and swords, and below, in black letters on a red background, were the words "Easton Boys' Academy".
Entering from the gate, there was a wall on the left and a hillside covered with white wattle on the right. It was now the blooming season for white wattle, and the large swathes of fragrant white flowers were as pure as snow. As the wind blew, the rich fragrance flowed over them like a waterfall, and when the sweet, cloying perfume grew too strong, it hovered between pleasant and unpleasant, like the scent that boys carried.
Turning a corner, he saw towering trees with twisted branches. A thin mist hung in the golden sunlight, and rows of red-tiled, brown-walled buildings lay beneath it. The buildings were old, exuding a sense of decaying grandeur. A bell tower in the distance suddenly began to chime.
The windows of the bell tower were made of stained glass, as dazzling as a divine crown. The air was filled with a rich fragrance. He glanced at his phone; it was exactly nine o'clock in the morning.
Just as the ringing stopped, the entire campus seemed to come alive. A cacophony of voices stirred the lush foliage as waves of students in uniforms and leather shoes came into view.
This scene was familiar to anyone who had attended school, except that all the students in sight were teenage boys, bustling about.
The air seemed to be filled with surging hormones, bright and youthful, giving Ning Song a vivid sense of the all-boys school.
This was a completely different world from the one he had lived in before—a BL universe.
This formerly religious school had now been expanded into Easton Province's most prestigious and modern boys' school. With annual tuition fees of nearly a million asicoins, it was one of the four most prestigious boys' academies in the Asian Federation and an unattainable sanctuary for ordinary people. It was a place where order and chaos coexisted, a paradise for the privileged.
The school bus carried him through the crowd. These uniformed young masters all turned to look at him. The stone statue of the Virgin Mary in front of the academic building looked down gently and compassionately. Ning Song's delicate, pale face was hidden behind the shifting light and shadow of the bus window, ordinary and thin.
The boys on the roadside whispered and pointed at Ning Song, who was riding the school bus.
"Look, isn't that the special admission student?"
"Who?"
"The special admissions student from sophomore Class 3, right?"
"He's the first special admissions student from the slums in the 112-year history of Easton Academy."
The bus drove through most of the campus and stopped in front of a two-story building with red walls and black tiles, built in a blend of Chinese and Western styles.
"I've been instructed to drop you off here. Someone should be down to meet you soon," the driver said.
Probably, the driver thought.
He was a special admissions student who no one would really care about. Being overlooked was just the least of the many difficulties he would face in the future.
Ning Song got out of the bus and thanked the driver.
The driver looked at him meaningfully for a moment. A gust of wind blew, almost covering Ning Song's eyebrows with his hair. The driver hesitated, but in the end, said nothing and drove away.
Ning Song stood at the bottom of the building with his heavy backpack for a while, and suddenly saw two boys in school uniforms emerge from a small grove nearby, hand in hand.
Ning Song: "..."
Damn, this really is a school for gay boys!
He unconsciously took a step back, and with a snap, he stepped on a flower branch.
It was a branch of violently pink flowers, and where he had stepped on it, the petals were stained with crimson bruises and mud.
A cold, clear male voice asked coldly, "Are you Ning Song, the transfer student from High School No. 3 of the Lower Harbor?"
Ning Song turned and saw a boy wearing glasses, a black uniform, gray pants and black leather shoes. Even the butterfly knots on his shoes had an arrogant elegance. He looked at Ning Song with slightly lowered eyes.
In the past, with his bad temper, he wouldn't have bothered with such an arrogant person.
Now, after glancing at the golden nameplate on the other person's chest, he smiled sweetly and bowed politely, calling out, "Hello, Senior."
This senior named Zhou Lu had a rather stern and aloof face. The disappointment and contempt in his eyes were hard to hide. "Follow me," he said.
Ning Song followed him inside. As they walked, Senior Zhou turned around and asked, "How old are you?"
"Seventeen," Ning Song replied.
"You look younger than in your photo. At first glance, I thought I had mistaken you."
"Maybe it's because I'm a little fatter in my photo," Ning Song said with a smile.
When he smiled, the creases at the corners of his lips were very obvious, making him look even thinner. Senior Zhou raised an arrogant brow and stopped looking at him.
Easton Academy granted the student council a great deal of power. Almost the entire office building was filled with student council members, and they were responsible for most of the administrative work. Zhou Lu was the head of their sophomore year and one of the three vice presidents of the student council.
The council members re-evaluated his entrance level and determined his rating. Zhou Lu handed him a nameplate, saying, "This is your nameplate. You must wear it at all times while on campus, or you will lose points if you are caught. These rules are all written in the dress code. You've read it, right?"
Ning Song nodded. "I've read it."
The nameplate had the Easton Academy emblem and his name on it.
The emblem was white, with two crossed white swords surrounded by a bouquet of white roses.
But when he looked at Senior Zhou's nameplate, it was gold.
He had seen in the fan-made videos of this novel that Easton Academy students had a total of four levels: white, red, gold, and pure black, divided according to their overall school points.
It seemed he was currently at the lowest level, with a white nameplate.
He remembered that many of the protagonists in the novel had black nameplates.
Children from upper-class families received the best education from a young age, and naturally had higher overall scores.
Someone like him, with a background like his, couldn't compare at all.
He glanced at the nameplates of the student council members. They were either red or gold, the colors most people had.
It seemed he would have to climb up from the bottom!
After finishing all the procedures and coming out of the office building, he had another cardboard box in his arms, containing his textbooks for the new semester, a freshman gift package and his spring school uniforms. His backpack was already huge, and with a box in his arms, his thin frame looked a little strained, but Zhou Lu, who was taking him to the dormitory, had no intention of helping him.
The office building was right next to a football field, and a group of boys there had just finished playing football and were washing their faces in the nearby pool.
Ning Song followed Zhou Lu past the group of boys and noticed that everyone was staring at him.
...What did they eat to grow so tall?!
Their average height was definitely over 185 cm. They were tall and strong, easily twice his size.
With such a height difference...it was a good thing he was straight!
Not only were these guys tall, but they were also very good-looking. The least attractive one was still a generically handsome boy; every single one of them was a rich and handsome flower.
They were wearing matching athletic shorts and long socks, their fair legs exposed, and their youthful hormones were simply overwhelming.
But Ning Song was still drawn to the guy in the middle.
He had dyed his hair an eye-catching silver, and he was standing with one foot on the edge of the pool, tying his shoelaces. He was wearing white athletic socks, a loose-fitting hoodie and gray three-quarter-length shorts that revealed his strong, long legs. He turned and glanced at Ning Song casually, then turned back to open the faucet and wash his hands.
He was as beautiful and unbridled as a shower of fireworks in the day, blooming under the hot sun.
It was as if this character had suddenly walked out of a manhua.
Sheng Yan!
It was Sheng 焱 Yan, whose name held three 火 flames.
"Senior Zhou, there's a new student?" asked the tall boy who was holding a soccer ball.
He was very handsome, and dimples appeared on his cheeks when he smiled. He was sweating profusely.
Zhou Lu nodded, but his gaze fell on Sheng Yan. He smiled and said, "He's from the class next door," then added, "that special admission student."
But Sheng Yan didn't seem interested in him. It was the others who, upon hearing that he was the special admission student, took a few more glances at him.
Ning Song's hair was a little long, and he was wearing a black jacket with a faded collar and khaki cotton pants that were a bit worn. His new sneakers seemed out of place with the rest of his outfit.
This look was really too inconspicuous. It wasn’t even the most ordinary they’d seen. Last year, two special admission students had come to their school as well, one of whom was short and dark, making a deep impression.
After Ning Song and the others had walked away, a boy ran from the field, carrying his school uniform. Seeing that everyone was staring at Ning Song, he asked, "Yuan-ge, who are you looking at?"
The boy he called Yuan-ge gazed at Ning Song contemptuously. "A very disappointing new toy."
"After all the hype about the special admission student, this is what we get?"
"Hype?" Sheng Yan shook his wet hand. "If you have nothing to do, just practice your football some more. A loser like you is still so concerned about useless gossip?"
Li Qingyuan laughed. "It would have been interesting if he were a handsome guy. Maybe Li You and Qin Yi would fight over him."
Now, it was a pity.
There were only two types of special admission students at Easton Public School. One type was the student from a wealthy family who had gotten in through connections, borrowing the title of the special admission quota. This kind of student could do fine. The other type was the true special admission student. These so-called lucky ones weren't actually that lucky. Aside from a few exceptionally outstanding ones, the others had outcomes that were pretty much the same; they either became toys for the rich boys or were ordinary in both ability and appearance, making it almost a pipe dream for them to truly integrate into the world of the wealthy. Every school had a few people at the top of the pyramid and naturally, a few at the very bottom.
This new transfer student was clearly the latter kind.
He wasn’t worth any conflict but would definitely be at the very bottom of the entire school.
Li Qingyuan watched Ning Song's figure, which seemed to blend into the light, and said, "I hope that little bean sprout doesn't have too miserable of a time!"
***
The author has something to say:
At sunset on St. Michael's Avenue, an Aston Martin slowly followed Ning Song, who was carrying a backpack. On a rainy day, Ning Song, who was being sent home, saw a figure sitting at the door of his house. When the underground city rioted, two boys ran through the crowd towards Ning Song, but one of them grabbed his hand first. During a lively masquerade ball for the young, Ning Song, wearing a mask, was full of vigor, dancing and singing in the crowd, with countless eyes hidden in the crowd watching him. A colorful disco ball twinkled, and a beer bottle spun rapidly on the table in a private room. In an intense youth sports stadium, in a crowded concert with thousands of people, in a small dark room where only rapid breathing could be heard, running, embracing, zipping up a coat, holding up an umbrella — then there were two loud bangs, followed by fireworks exploding in the night sky. Someone stood behind him, covering his eyes and burying their face in his white and slender nape on an uncontrollable impulse.
Finally, a vlog recorded by an unknown person played. It recorded Ning Song when he had just enrolled, looking like a little bean sprout, then Ning Song as he began to grow taller, then Ning Song as he became the class representative, and finally the Ning Song whose every smile and frown made it impossible to look away. The shaky camera captured an obsessive and morbid crush.
At the end of the video, someone shouted loudly, "Ning Song."
Ning Song, now the number one figure of the four prestigious schools, turned around and looked directly at the camera. His eyes, like roses steeped in rich fragrance, were as beautiful as an illusion.
The story begins! This time, the main character is everyone's darling, with pursuers, admirers and devotees following him one after another. It's basically about the protagonist shou, going from an ordinary person to the class beauty, then to the school beauty, and finally becoming the scandalous heartthrob who causes a stir in the entire school!
See you next time!
***
cela’s notes:
Starting a new novel! This one looks promising, but I’ll see if my love can last past the honeymoon phase lol. Also I’ve just started a Poetry MFA and I’m super busy! I got through the first chapter purely by procrastinating during breaks between sections of my incredibly boring readings for my first class. I think my brain has rotted from reading too many romance novels.
I kinda want to title this After the Passerby Cannon Fodder at an Elite Boys' School Suddenly Glowed Up.
Shèng Yàn is named 盛焱, which can be literally translated as “magnificent flames.”
1 hour and 35 minutes for 3995 words, or 2.4 minutes for every 100 words.
A total of 2 hours and 1 minute for 4633 words, or 2.6 minutes for every 100 words.
If you like this translation, please consider encouraging me on Ko-fi! 💛
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