The young couple, their passion about to ignite, hurriedly gathered their things and left.
The tanned athlete rolled up his sleeves, revealing wheat-colored skin that contrasted sharply with his partner’s. He slung both their backpacks over his shoulder, not letting his partner carry a single thing, and tugged his arm, leading him out.
Even a toddler could guess why they were in such a hurry to leave.
God.
He had only come here to soak up some cultural knowledge, but he’d almost become a clueless bystander in one of those Japanese pornos!
Couldn’t these couples please leave the library alone?
After the couple left, only he and the gloomy, handsome boy were left in the library.
The atmosphere seemed much cleaner, with only the sound of pages turning filling the air.
The magazines were all new, barely touched, and still had a distinct smell of ink. Some pages still held the faintest stickiness from the ink. The heat that filled him hadn’t yet dissipated. He lowered his head. His hair was wavy, and his nape and hands were pale and slender. Due to his slimness, his ears seemed especially prominent, tinged with pink, becoming one of the few spots of color on his body.
Because he kept his head down, he completely missed the gloomy boy’s repeated glances.
He stayed in the library reading until it was 10:40.
From eleven to twelve o’clock, he had a cello lesson.
Ning Song left twenty minutes ahead of time and went straight to the music building.
He had a terrible sense of direction, and the school was so vast that it made him dizzy. He always felt like the sun was shining in the north and that all the cardinal directions were reversed. Even though he knew he was walking south, he felt like he was going north. He just couldn't get it right.
The white wattle trees in the middle of the campus were over ten meters tall, their branches thick with flowers. When the wind blew, they swayed, and their fragrance enveloped him.
The white wattle was the state flower of Easton Province. Supposedly, a former governor had been very fond of it, so he had promoted its cultivation throughout the province.
After taking many wrong turns, when he finally arrived at the music room, he ran into the gloomy boy again. He was tall, narrow-waisted and sharp-featured.
Apart from his face, every part of him was angular. His figure was slender, but it was exceptionally sharp.
The gloomy boy entered the same classroom he was about to enter.
It turned out they were in the same class.
As Ning Song followed closely behind him, the previously noisy music room suddenly fell silent. Dozens of sixteen or seventeen-year-old boys turned to look at him.
They were all wearing the same black uniform, and their gazes made him feel like he was sinking into a black vortex.
He was the only student in the class with a white badge.
A tall, handsome boy said to him, "Go get your cello."
He saw it was their class monitor, Chen Mo. He had added him on social media last week.
Chen Mo had a bass voice with a youthful tone, so he recognized him immediately.
He was clean and refined, like a piece of uncarved jade.
Unlike Senior Zhou's arrogant habit of looking down on people, the class monitor was only aloof, but he was always willing to answer questions. If you asked him for help, he would help you, but he wouldn't give you any emotional response.
Ning Song learned the rules of Easton Boys’ School in the first two months. All the things needed for school courses, such as musical instruments and sports equipment, were provided by the school. Perhaps this was because they wanted to minimize the gap between students from different economic backgrounds.
On the one hand, they had established a clear and strict hierarchical system, and on the other hand, they tried to hide the differences between the various levels. This world was truly contradictory.
He hurriedly went to get his cello. He was small, and the cello looked particularly out of proportion with his body.
Luckily, he had been practicing these past two months, otherwise, with his sickly body, he probably wouldn't have been able to carry it.
Carrying his cello, he looked for a seat, and his eyes met the gloomy boy's.
The gloomy boy seemed to recognize him, and gave him a look.
Ning Song sat down in the empty seat next to him.
He was glad to meet someone like him.
As everyone knew, schoolboys and high school lookers were not the same species.
It was because of ordinary high school students like him that high school boys with stunning appearances like the gloomy boy stood out even more.
It was the same in reverse. Guys like the gloomy boy were like the moon. A tiny, dim star like him could become invisible around him.
He looked around at the others again.
He felt that his previous worries were a bit narcissistic.
There were too many handsome guys in this school. He was the most inconspicuous one in his class.
He didn't even need to pretend; his looks and height were directly ranked at the bottom.
His new classmates were all full of the vigor and brilliance that came from money and power.
As his gaze swept across the room, he found their appearances and temperaments were around the same. Only two people stood out.
One was the gloomy boy. Needless to say, he was the perfect prototype of a school campus male lead. He was simply too brooding and handsome.
The other was a boy sitting in the first row.
He was about the same height and just as thin as Ning Song, but unlike him, this boy was as delicate as a porcelain doll. He had doe eyes, but as soon as they met Ning Song's gaze, they immediately drifted away, leaving only the back of his head in Ning Song’s sight. He had a small braid at the back of his head, about the length of a finger.
Ning Song had seen him among those twenty cards!
Having two protagonists in one class should be enough, right?
As a newcomer, he was naturally the focus of the whole class. A few boys were discussing him in English.
"He's really from the Lower Harbor?"
"Fuck, Lu Zixuan, don't sneak a photo. Don't let him see."
He could also hear them saying, "Do you think he can understand what we're saying?"
"Then let's switch to French."
"He didn’t react. He definitely can't understand."
Whatever makes you happy.
Ning Song adjusted his cello slightly.
"Are you Ning Song?"
A bespectacled boy who seemed quite ordinary leaned over.
"Yes, hello." Ning Song greeted him with a smile.
The other person was quite friendly. "Hi, my name is 乔侨 Qiao Qiao. 乔 Qiáo as in 小乔 Xiao-Qiao, and 侨 Qiáo as in 华侨 overseas Chinese."
Qiao Qiao had a face as ordinary as his own, looking like a fair-skinned bookworm. He had thin lips, and seemed like the character in a novel who was responsible for spreading gossip.
Sure enough, Qiao Qiao was very enthusiastic in chatting with him, asking him where he had studied before and why he had transferred in his second year of high school.
"Come sit next to me," Qiao Qiao said quietly.
Ning Song obediently moved over.
In a new environment, it was necessary to make friends as soon as possible. There was no reason to reject someone who was extending an olive branch. Moreover, judging by Qiao Qiao's clothing and demeanor, he didn't seem like someone who was being bullied.
This was very important. If a newcomer befriended someone who was isolated, they themselves were easily isolated as well.
Qiao Qiao lowered his voice, "You'd better stay away from Pu Darcy. He doesn't like people getting too close to him."
"Pu Darcy?"
Qiao Qiao nodded, seeing that Ning Song knew nothing, he secretly gave him some background information.
That seemingly quiet and taciturn handsome guy was called Pu Yu, and Pu Darcy was his nickname.
When he was in middle school, he played Mr. Darcy in a school performance of Pride and Prejudice, and everyone thought he was the middle school version of Darcy.
And you know what? They were actually quite similar!
The boys in the class were all good-looking. After all, they were all rich second-generation heirs of one kind or another, so their height and temperament were evident. But Pu Yu was the most outstanding of all. Prestigious schools were never short of wealthy and powerful students, but Pu Yu's family was at the very top of the social pyramid.
Qiao Qiao added in a low voice, "His grandfather is Pu Mingke."
It was just a simple name, without any suffix or title, for only one reason: this name was a household name in this world.
Ning Song secretly searched for this name on his phone.
He immediately had an impression of this family.
Because Ning Song's father was a driver for the Pu family.
During the riot on December 9th last year, Mr. Pu was attacked by rioters. It was said that Ning Song's father, who happened to be passing by, risked his life to knock the criminal to the ground. Afterwards, Mr. Pu not only gave him a large sum of money but also hired him as a driver for the Pu family. Ning Song's mother also resigned from her job at a laundry shop in the slums and became a maid at the Pu family mansion. Mrs. Pu, hearing of Ning Song’s excellent grades, recommended him for a special admission quota at Easton Boys' School.
Ning Song's parents were extremely grateful and almost overwhelmed. On the day their son transferred schools, they didn't even dare to ask for leave.
If Easton Boys' School had its own pyramid, Pu Yu would be at the very top. And Ning Song would be at the very bottom. There were no two people in the entire school who were farther apart than they were.
No wonder his classmates looked at him like that when he sat next to Pu Yu.
“Our class is quite peaceful, there’s no class more united than ours,” Qiao Qiao laughed, “except for Pu Darcy and Zhenzhen.”
“Zhenzhen?”
Ning Song instinctively looked at the pretty little thing sitting in the first row.
Qiao Qiao said, “Zhenzhen is a little introverted. He might not like to talk to people, but he’s a good person.”
He was pretty and delicate, slightly closed-off, a rich kid, with a signature little ponytail and a bunch of buffs.
Could he be Pu Yu's counterpart?
He glanced at Pu Yu.
As soon as the class started, their cello teacher had him play a piece to gauge his general level.
He played the cello very poorly.
In fact, he had been cramming during the past two months. Ever since he passed the special admission exam for Easton Boys' School, Ning Song's parents had immediately signed him up for several crash courses, because the four major schools in the Asian Federation, unlike ordinary high schools, placed emphasis on students' all-rounded qualities. In the regular high school he used to attend, Ning Song had excellent academic performance, but his artistic and athletic abilities were far inferior to those of the rich kids in this aristocratic school.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t put much effort into learning.
He couldn’t help it; when he crossed over, he didn’t know which novel he had transmigrated into. It was only when he heard his mother happily say that there was a way to send him to an interview for Easton Boys' School that he thought the name of the school sounded familiar, and then he realized with shock that he seemed to have transmigrated into a novel.
So the first thing he did after transmigrating was to figure out a way to make money.
He didn't have any special talents. As an orphan, he had been in frail health since childhood. Besides studying, he also loved playing games.
At first, he just liked playing games, but later he liked making his own games.
There was a teacher at the orphanage named Liu Chaohui who was very supportive of him. Ning Song started learning programming in the fourth grade of elementary school, and the other kids said he was a genius.
He didn't think of himself as a genius, he just genuinely loved programming.
And he was a person who was very obsessive about the things he loved.
He had recently gotten in touch with a gaming company called Shark E-Art. Making games couldn't be done alone. Marketing and promotion were very important. Shark E-Art was a new company, but it had a good reputation, and it loved to discover and cultivate new talents. He sent them a game he had developed and designed. He had written this game when he was in middle school, and he couldn't write out all the code from memory. Recently, he had been improving this game in his spare time, while waiting for Shark E-Art's evaluation and feedback.
It was rare to have a career that one was both good at and genuinely loved. Even if he lived a hundred lives, his goal would not change.
Addicted to making games, he didn't even eat properly, let alone have any energy to learn the cello.
Besides gaming, he seemed to have nothing else in his decade and more of life.
He was boring, and the only thing he was good at was an uninteresting thing like programming. He wasn’t like the protagonists, who either danced or played the piano or studied art. Even if they were interested in gaming, they were beautiful e-sports players or bad-tempered but eye-catching livestream anchors.
He was just here as a tool, a stone hammer, no doubt.
So, after he finished playing the cello, some of his classmates snickered, and his teacher was taken aback.
But she probably hadn't had high hopes for him to begin with. As a special admit from the slums, it was good enough that he had the money to attend school, let alone learn an instrument. Art was just the icing on the cake for the rich kids.
So she stuck to the principle of encouragement. “Not bad, you played an entire piece from start to finish.”
This poor student from the slums, clearly unaware of the concept of shame, actually smiled, looking quite content with himself for having managed to play an entire piece.
It was unclear whether the cello was leaning against him or he was leaning against the cello, but in any case, it looked like the cello was about to crush him.
Almost immediately, someone live-streamed his first class at Easton Boys’ School on the school forum, complete with pictures.
By the afternoon, Ning Song’s photos had spread throughout the entire school.
During break, he went to the bathroom and took a sneak peek at the school forum.
As soon as he logged in, there were posts about him everywhere.
“What’s up with the new special admit?”
“He’s from the Lower Harbor, what were you expecting? Are there any pretty boys there? All the pretty boys there have probably been dragged off to underground bars and KTVs!”
“He’s just a bookworm without his glasses.”
“Does he have some kind of health problem? He looks so pale.”
“It’s hard to say, the environment in the Lower Harbor is terrifying! He looks sickly, I’m glad our school has entrance physical exams, I was worried he might have some kind of contagious disease!”
Ning Song enlarged his photo.
He was scrawny, his eyes seemed unnaturally large and his lips were a sickly pale color. If he had been playing the violin, that would have been one thing, or even a larger instrument like the piano, perhaps that would have been better, but it was the cello.
The instrument really made him look like he was nothing but skin and bones, with his wrists thin and white and his head slightly bowed.
He had good features, but he was too skinny, and he lacked any kind of energy. At first glance, he was quite disappointing, and naturally, no one was willing to take a closer look at his features.
The new students on the forum insulted and belittled him to no end. Someone with a weaker mentality would probably have gotten depressed from reading it.
Fortunately, he didn't care.
He had been worried that he would get involved in some messy gay romance.
But it didn't seem like that was going to happen.
However, he didn't know that someone was staring at a set of his photos on the screen.
Ning Song was playing the cello, smiling at the teacher after he finished.
His hair was soft and slightly wavy, his skin was fragile and white, and although he wasn't short, he looked a bit frail.
He zoomed in and zoomed in again, zooming in until the entire screen was just his face or his hand, like a magnifying glass. He examined him from head to toe.
There was a great difference in size between him and this boy; he would be perfect to hold in his arms, unable to escape.
The screen went dark, reflecting a pair of faintly blue glasses, and behind these thin lenses were a pair of amorous, gentle, peach blossom eyes.
***
cela’s notes:
The class monitor, Chén Mò, is named 陈墨, meaning “display” and “ink.” A suitably literary name.
59 minutes for 2935 words, or 2 minutes for every 100 words. A decrease of 0.2 minutes.
A total of 3 hours and 50 minutes for 9889 words, or 2.3 minutes for every 100 words. A decrease of 0.2 minutes.
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