Seeing Shen Mingjun sprawled on the floor in humiliation, the other students kept sneaking glances at him, some openly, others discreetly. The group chat was on fire, and one busybody even took a secret photograph so absent classmates could enjoy the spectacle.
Yu Bai, who had never liked Shen Mingjun anyway, couldn't resist patting him on the shoulder as he passed, shaking his head with an expression of profound sympathy.
It caused little actual harm, but the humiliation was devastating.
"Why are you even bothering with him?" Ying Jiayi couldn't keep the corners of her mouth down. Inside, she was practically laughing herself sick.
She had been wondering whether the revelations were true, but Shen Mingjun's reaction was practically a confession.
Heaven had eyes! That pretentious bastard's true colours were finally exposed.
"Just teasing him." Yu Bai shrugged. "Speaking of which, where did Gu Yang go?"
They had been so busy dissecting that explosive gossip in the group chat that they only now noticed the source himself had vanished.
"Ah Yang said he was going to the toilet." The class monitor, who stood leaning against the wall, answered with a pleasant smile. He glanced at his watch. "Though he's been gone quite a while. It's rather worrying."
"He's a grown person. What could happen? He probably slipped back to the classroom again." Yu Bai raked a hand through his hair. "Whatever. I'm leaving too. I don't want to miss any more gossip."
He snatched up his jacket and hurried out with Ying Jiayi.
The others stayed where they were, but their burning gazes fixed on the class monitor.
"Well, if you're all going to stare at me like that, we might as well leave early." The monitor looked away from the window and addressed the PE teacher. "Teacher Xu, our class will leave a few minutes early today. You can finish early as well."
The PE teacher nodded eagerly. Once that noisy procession of rich young masters and misses had departed, he finally let out a breath of relief.
Gu Yang really had been a little sleepy and had only intended to splash some water on his face in the toilet. But the nearest one was under repair, and he couldn't be bothered with a detour, so he headed toward the teaching building instead.
Since the onset of autumn, the sunlight had lost much of its intensity. As he walked through the covered passage, climbing vines twined around the wooden lattice overhead. Thin fragments of sunlight filtered through and fell on the flowerpots lining either side.
Gu Yang crouched down, hugged his knees, and stared blankly at the withered petals in one pot. After a while, he took out his phone, snapped a photograph, and began composing a post for his social feed.
Clack.
Something fell to the ground.
Then malicious laughter drifted around the corner.
Several boys in uniform shirts stood together, wearing nasty smiles. A cup of coffee lay smashed at their feet, and brown liquid had splashed across one boy's white trainers.
The boy confronting them had fallen to the ground. Coffee had stained his clothes too. His overlong fringe hid his eyes, and his tightly pressed lips made him look both cold and fiercely restrained.
"What's this? We were just walking along and somehow got coffee all over us. You didn't bump into me on purpose, did you? Trying to scam me?"
"This is exactly why I hate those specially admitted students. You get too close, and their stink of poverty rubs off on you. What rotten luck."
"Hey, look what you've done to my shoes. How are you planning to make it up to me? You can't afford to replace them, can you? Why don't you kneel down and apologise, huh?"
"You were the ones who bumped into me." The boy on the ground replied coldly and tried to push himself upright, only for one of his tormentors to kick him hard in the shoulder and knock him down again.
Another burst of laughter followed. The boys slung their arms around one another, laughing uncontrollably at the miserable figure on the floor.
"If you don't want to lick them clean, that's fine too." The instigator kept his foot raised to display his shoe. "But these are brand-new. For a fellow student, I'll even round the price down. Ten thousand yuan. Pay up, genius."
"What's wrong? Can't talk anymore? If you can't afford it, be a good boy and lick my shoe."
"How could he be broke? He can afford coffee that costs more than fifty yuan, can't he?"
"Hey, isn't our genius still collecting scholarship money every month?"
"Why don't we report him? If he can afford coffee that expensive, he clearly doesn't need a scholarship."
"Hahahaha, sounds good to me…"
The boys grew more enthusiastic with every remark. The boy on the floor remained silent, but the hand gripping his uniform was trembling so fiercely that his knuckles had turned white.
"What an ugly little farce."
The speaker was a silver-haired boy who had stood off to one side with his arms folded, watching the whole time without saying a word. His lips curled in something between a smile and a sneer.
He clearly hadn't started the confrontation, but the others all fell silent the moment he spoke.
"Why don't you try begging me? If I'm in a good mood, I might let the whole thing go." The silver-haired boy spoke with languid condescension. "As for how you should beg… use your imagination, Song Yinxing."
Gu Yang had been leaning behind a pillar and enjoying the show. At the sudden mention of that name, his hand slipped. Losing his support, he staggered several steps forward.
He ended up directly between the two sides. Looking up, he met the boys' eyes with an utterly innocent expression.
The suffocating atmosphere was shattered by this unexpected intruder. The silver-haired boy's previously leisurely expression grew complicated and oppressive as he looked down at Gu Yang.
The boy who had started the trouble looked as if he'd seen a ghost. All his earlier swagger vanished, and he exchanged uneasy glances with his companions.
Meanwhile, Yu Bai, leading the group back from the gym, reached that fateful corner. The moment he saw who was ahead, he slammed to a halt.
The crowd behind him crashed into one another and stopped as well.
"Why's Nie Ying here? Hasn't he been skipping class all day? I thought he wasn't even at school…"
"Who knows? Wait, how did he run into Gu Yang? Is something going to happen?"
"I just saw Gu Yang post on his social feed about how everything must eventually die. He added a photo of some half-dead flower. I thought he was having another gloomy episode somewhere."
As they whispered among themselves, Gu Yang's inner narration came online again.
[The boy standing to one side had dyed his hair a flamboyant white. He was exceedingly tall, with handsome, deep-set eyes and sharp features carved as if by a knife. The cruel smile at the corner of his mouth lent an almost wicked edge to his already imposing presence.]
Yu Bai listened to Gu Yang's description in astonishment, then looked at the person being described.
Live long enough, and apparently anything could happen. He had actually heard Gu Yang describe Nie Ying in complimentary terms.
Didn't those two hate each other's guts?
And then, the very next second—
[…What blind idiot wrote that? I'm going to throw up.]
Yu Bai: "…"
Now that was more like him.
The silver-haired boy's face, however, instantly turned icy, as if a layer of frost had settled over it.
He could definitely hear Gu Yang's thoughts too.
Holy shit. That was Nie Ying!
Yu Bai covered his face, scarcely daring to imagine the disaster about to unfold.
Nie Ying was the top protagonist of The Tyrannical Young Master's Long Road to Winning Back His Wife—the culprit who destroyed the bottom protagonist's prospects and could even be said to have indirectly caused his mother's death.
As the only son of the man who controlled the Nie Group, River City's leading conglomerate, Nie Ying was all but certain to inherit that vast business empire one day.
Raised amid almost unimaginable wealth and power, the young master had always lived by one rule: those who obeyed him survived; those who defied him perished.
The silver-haired boy stared at Gu Yang with a chilling, appraising gaze, as though he wanted to strip the flesh from his bones. His appearance truly was flawless, but the arrogance ingrained in him and his overwhelming, overbearing presence were just as real.
Gu Yang remained listless, as though nothing interested him. The shadows of his eyelashes concealed his expression. Anyone else who stumbled into a situation like this would be at least a little embarrassed, but Gu Yang always seemed oddly detached, almost numb to everything around him.
[This must be the scene where the two of them clash head-on for the first time. At this point, Nie Ying hasn't started beating him himself. He's still ordering his lackeys to do it.]
Later, the violence would escalate, and the top protagonist's treatment of the bottom would grow increasingly brutal.
If he hadn't heard Song Yinxing's name just now, Gu Yang wouldn't even have recognised the scene.
At the centre of the conversation, Nie Ying silently watched Gu Yang continue making sounds without ever opening his mouth.
[And they call this 'tyrannical'? He's just a pathologically aggressive brute.]
"Brother Nie, should we keep going?" the boy who had started it all asked cautiously.
Gu Yang had walked over and then said nothing for quite some time, while Brother Nie's face was growing visibly darker by the second. The boy hurried to demonstrate his loyalty.
[Nie Ying, Nie Ying.]
The voice repeated the two syllables, drawing them out with an almost lingering tenderness.
[Ha. Just as I thought. A complete lunatic.]
The lackey called again, trembling. "Brother Nie…"
Nie Ying suddenly forced a smile. He threw an arm around the boy's shoulders and used his superior height and strength to push him down. "What's the hurry? Trying to use me as your weapon?"
The boy went white with fright, convinced for a moment that Nie Ying had discovered his desire to settle a personal grudge. "H-how could I, Brother Nie? I only wanted to help you save face…"
Seeing that the boy was so frightened he could barely speak, Nie Ying released him with a bored expression. He hated incompetence and mediocrity.
Even his toys had to suit his tastes.
[Speaking of Song Yinxing… so this is him?]
The voice sounded again. Nie Ying narrowed his eyes, thinking hard.
He'd been hearing Gu Yang prattle on since the moment he arrived. Ordinarily, the dogs who trailed him would have rushed forward to attack without being told. Why were they suddenly too stupid to know whom they should be defending?
Had they all gone deaf? Was he the only one who could hear it?
But a quick sideways glance revealed a crowd doing a terrible job of hiding around the corridor corner. Practically the whole of his class had gathered there. When Yu Bai met his eyes, he began waggling his eyebrows furiously, making the most obvious signals imaginable.
Oh. So they could hear it too.
They were too stupid for words.
[Poor Song Yinxing. With a maniac like Nie Ying fixated on him, his life's as good as ruined.]
Fixated on him…
The wording made Nie Ying's expression even more unpredictable. Who did Gu Yang think he was? Why would someone like him waste time on a pauper?
In his mind, Gu Yang had always been like a parasitic vine.
A fragile, useless thing that couldn't survive without clinging to someone else.
Their families were roughly equal in wealth, but there was far more to status than family background alone.
"I'm handling a private matter. If you've got any sense, get lost and stop getting in my way," Nie Ying said contemptuously.
Gu Yang ignored him completely. He walked up to the boy on the ground, bent down, and raised his face with one hand.
He had to admit, it was a strikingly handsome face.
There had never been any ugly people in Gu Yang's social circle growing up. Once people became wealthy, they tended to choose attractive partners to improve the next generation's looks. Add the expensive grooming and education that followed, and their clothing, bearing, and speech naturally made them stand out.
But the youth before him clearly belonged to none of those categories.
His jet-black eyes resembled bottomless pools. They were long and slightly upturned at the outer corners, cool but not harsh. Even in such a dishevelled state, one look was enough to tell he was destined for extraordinary things.
He looked nothing like the black-haired boy with the absurdly inverted-triangle face being embraced on that hideous pink cover in Gu Yang's mind.
So this was Song Yinxing, the bottom protagonist of the novel?
[He's actually pretty good-looking. I suppose that's what you'd expect of a protagonist.]
The voice sounded again, and Nie Ying knitted his brows.
Clearly, this extraordinary voice was being transmitted directly into his head. It had nothing to do with the volume of the sounds around him.
[Why not just use his real face? They turned him into some pointy-chinned freak. Who's that even supposed to appeal to?]
What protagonist? What pointy-chinned freak? What kind of madness was Gu Yang spouting now?
Nie Ying couldn't make sense of any of it. His frown deepened, and an oppressive chill seemed to radiate from him, making the gossiping students of Class Eleven unconsciously edge backward.
[After having such a promising future destroyed, if he can still end up with the guy responsible…]
[Then if I give him just a little help, won't Song Yinxing fall madly in love with me?]
