Hu Xiujie used only twenty-one words to give Xie Lan nightmares for an entire night.

Perhaps he had read too many weird internet jokes, but he dreamt that Hu Xiujie was chasing him down with a forty-meter-long machete. She allowed him a thirty-nine-meter head start, but every time she caught and “killed” him, he was dragged back to the starting line to do it all over again. The cycle repeated; he was hacked at all night long.

The next day, the office stood in silence. Looking at the cold-faced “Female Yama” before him, Xie Lan couldn’t help but suspect she really did have a knife tucked behind her back.

“What are you looking at?” Hu Xiujie’s eyebrows shot up. “Why do you keep peeking behind my back?”

Xie Lan listlessly withdrew his gaze. “Teacher, I feel very guilty.”

Hu Xiujie glared at him. “I haven’t even started scolding you yet!”

Xie Lan opened his mouth. “…Oh.”

It was already mid-May, and the afternoon was sweltering. The air conditioning wasn’t on in the office, making it stifling enough to sweat.

There was no breeze outside, yet waves of heat managed to drill their way into the room. Leaning against the window, Dou Sheng listened to the lecture quietly, though his gaze rested faintly on the wutong flower petals outside, as if he were zoning out.

“Be serious!”

Hu Xiujie’s voice suddenly rose an octave. “I don’t care if you have a million fans or ten million, your words and actions must have limits! If I hadn’t decided on a whim to check on you, I wouldn’t have known you were acting so outrageously!”

Hearing this, Dou Sheng turned his gaze back, switching modes in a split second. He bowed his head expertly. “Teacher, your criticism is correct. There won’t be a next time.”

He paused, then added in a low voice, “But please don’t camp out in my livestreams anymore. Really, it’s easy to incite teacher-student conflict.”

Hu Xiujie shot him a hateful glare before turning her eyes toward Xie Lan.

Xie Lan stiffened, automatically engaging repeat mode: “Teacher, your criticism is correct. I won’t have a next time either.”

“You two…” Hu Xiujie’s eyes swept back and forth between their faces. She looked like she wanted to say something but stopped.

Inexplicably, Xie Lan felt a bit guilty.

He tried hard to maintain a posture of total submission—eyes watching the nose, nose watching the heart—while listening to Dou Sheng calmly ask beside him, “What did we do?”

Hu Xiujie hesitated. She narrowed her eyes slightly, sizing them up for a long time, but eventually said nothing specific.

She waved her hand irritably. “You always ask me to forgive you, but then what? Xie Lan, I won’t criticize him; he’s been constantly improving. The third monthly exam is coming up, and his review state has been very good recently. But what about you? Can you show me some attitude?”

Xie Lan didn’t quite understand the last sentence. In his understanding, “attitude” was an abstract noun. How was one supposed to “show” or “take” it out?

Subconsciously, he glanced at Dou Sheng.

Dou Sheng, hearing this, smiled. He casually picked up the school bag sitting by his feet and said, “I knew you would say that, so I brought my attitude with me.”

Hu Xiujie looked surprised. “You brought it? What is it?”

Xie Lan also glanced at the bag.

He assumed it was notebooks and pens. When Dou Sheng had arrived carrying the bag earlier, Xie Lan had guessed Dou Sheng was prepared to write a 50,000-word self-reflection right there.

But soon, facts proved that his understanding of Dou Sheng was still too shallow.

Under Hu Xiujie’s tiger-like glare, Dou Sheng leisurely unzipped the bag and pulled out a high-quality JK uniform (Japanese-style schoolgirl uniform).

Sunlight streamed through the window onto the uniform. The color scheme of white and milk-coffee brown was utterly gentle, glittering with a girlish aura. It had been ironed overnight; there wasn’t a single crease. A light touch promised silky smoothness.

Dou Sheng held the uniform up with both hands, treating it as something precious and heavy. “Teacher, I have decided to give this uniform to you.”

Hu Xiujie’s pupils quaked. “What??”

“For you!” Dou Sheng bowed. “This is a testament to my fans’ achievements, and also the crystallization of your painstaking cultivation of me. Please, do not refuse to accept it!”

Hu Xiujie: “???”

---

Leaving the office, Xie Lan couldn’t help but look back several times to ensure Hu Xiujie hadn’t been angered into a stupor.

Dou Sheng stood outside the door. expertly shoving his left hand into his pocket, he raised his right hand to wave at Hu Xiujie.

His expression was nonchalant, but his tone was very affectionate. “Teacher, I look forward to seeing you wear it. Then, I can die with no regrets.”

There was absolutely no response from inside the room.

A momentary look of dementia had surfaced in Hu Xiujie’s usually sharp and steady eyes.

They walked a good distance away before Dou Sheng finally reached out and draped his arm over Xie Lan’s shoulder, his arm trembling.

Xie Lan glanced at him sideways, expressionless, watching him bend over with laughter.

“Hahahaha, Old Hu has never been stumped like this in her life.” Dou Sheng wiped away a tear that had squeezed out from the corner of his eye. “Can you imagine? If Old Hu dressed as a JK, the principal would come to take a commemorative photo.”

Hu Xiujie actually maintained her figure very well; wearing a JK uniform wouldn’t be an issue physically.

But that image… was indeed terrifying.

Xie Lan shuddered in the sweltering heat. Frowning, he slapped Dou Sheng’s hand away. “Are you annoying or what?”

Dou Sheng retorted with righteous confidence, “If I didn’t give the teacher a gift, would we have escaped the tiger’s den so quickly?”

Xie Lan: “…”

Redefining “giving the teacher a gift.”

Since they still had time during the lunch break, they planned to go out and buy lunch. Under the blazing sun, Dou Sheng yawned lazily. “This is called being a savior. As long as you’re with Douzi (Bean), you can turn danger into safety. Hey, there’s a Chinese character: the left side is the ‘Dou’ from Douzi, and the right side is ‘An’ (Peace). This character was practically designed for me.”

Xie Lan tried to visualize it in his head, then shook it honestly. “I don’t recognize it.”

“Of course you don’t.” Dou Sheng tapped his finger lightly against Xie Lan’s collarbone. “It’s just pronounced Dou.”

Xie Lan repeated it silently. “What does it mean?”

“Just treat it as a collective noun,” Dou Sheng drawled with a hum. “It’s a collection of all the wonderful, joyous things in the human world. It includes: rain after a long drought, meeting an old friend in a distant land, the wedding night, and seeing your name on the imperial examination list.”

Xie Lan said “Oh,” and nodded. “Chinese is indeed concise. That’s good.”

Dou Sheng leaned on his shoulder and laughed softly, though Xie Lan didn’t know what he was laughing at.

Just as Xie Lan was about to ask, he heard Dou Sheng’s muffled voice low against his neck: “Boyfriend, you are so cute.”

The sun was too blinding; it made the tips of Xie Lan’s ears burn a little.

They rounded the side of the laboratory building and stood under a windowless wall. The campus was empty at noon on Saturday. The wind blew, lifting soft petals from the wutong trees. Dou Sheng first pinched Xie Lan’s chin, then leaned in to kiss him.

The sunlight dazzled Xie Lan into closing his eyes. When he opened them again, gasping for air, he felt his limbs go a little soft.

The wind passed continuously; it should have felt cooler.

But his neck and cheeks only turned redder.

---

At the end of May, the English High School sophomore year third monthly exam concluded.

Xie Lan went all out during the exam week, but Dou Sheng remained as leisurely as ever. He even managed to edit and upload the Class 4 basketball game video the night before the exam.

Xie Lan hadn’t had the energy to pay attention to Bilibili. It wasn’t until the exams finished on Friday and he was on his way home that he remembered the new video.

[The Secret of the Owl is Eternal Spirit | Ying Hua High School Class 2-4 Summer Basketball Game Record]

The intro was white text on a black screen, with no background music. But if you turned the headphone volume up, you could hear the subtle sound of wind blowing through leaves—the wutong trees of English High.

「When the plane first landed, I never thought I would meet THEM.

This group of people is so vivid, like rising bubbles in afternoon soda water, and also like the clear weather I never saw in London the day I returned. — by Xie Lan」

「The above was written for me by Douzi, my Chinese isn’t that good yet. — by the real Xie Lan」

The subtitles faded, and the sound of a violin grew from weak to strong, gradually transitioning into a fiery allegro.

The editing fluidly cut between scenes—countless moments of Class 4 players dodging, shifting, leaping, and sweating. The basketball hit the ground with a thump-thump-thump, simulating a heartbeat. In the lens, the ground zoomed in and out, the rhythm scattered but precise. Snow-white sneakers squeaked against the concrete, and amidst the constant shouts, a flash of a light blue skirt flitted by.

Screen time was distributed evenly among every player—Yu Fei, with his world-weary face, flying through the air for a one-handed dunk, muscles bulging on his slender arms, the basket shaking violently in the wind like leaves. Dou Sheng running under the scorching sun, sweat hanging from the tips of his hair, glowing in the light; he jumped lightly from outside the three-point line, his wrist flicking the ball into the net, leaving an orange arc in the air. Wang Gou gritting his teeth to prop himself up after a fall; Chen Ge moving like flowing water, turning his back to bypass four people in a row to score in the paint…

Tens of hours of footage resulted in only an eight-minute final cut, but every frame was essential.

Xie Lan watched the data skyrocketing in the Bilibili backend.

Back when he had a million followers on YouTube, he seemed to hit a bottleneck. But perhaps because the content types on Bilibili were broader, his fan count showed signs of growing even more aggressively.

The Ying Hua Class 4 video stayed in Bilibili’s recommended search for two days. Although Hu Xiujie didn’t say anything explicitly, she showed off to the teacher next door for a long time during the weekend physics competition class and even projected the video for everyone to watch as relaxation during the break.

The class group chat exploded with messages. Everyone was busy reposting the video; scrolling down WeChat Moments revealed screen after screen of the same link.

[Cherry]: I look so handsome in my shots.

[Dong Shuijing]: Thank you for the effort, there’s even a close-up of Chen Ge.

[Feng Miao]: The girls are really eye-catching.

[Vincent]: Of course, the girls in our class are top-tier.

[Dong Shuijing]: Yo.

[Wang Gou]: I sent it to my grandma, I’m on TV!

[Liu Yixuan]: You guys are simply the best! /Owl tilting head

[Cherry]: Spirit!!

Various owl stickers bombarded the chat for N rounds. Xie Lan also sent a cute sticker of an owl waving its wings.

[Dong Shuijing]: The Owl name has made it to Bilibili, grateful to the two big bosses.

[Dong Shuijing]: @TerminallyIll @Dr.Douzi

[Dong Shuijing]: Eh?

[Liu Yixuan]: Isn’t there something a bit off about your two nicknames…

[Cherry]: What’s wrong?

[Herring]: Are they going to be sworn brothers?

[Cherry]: Damn, now that you mention it, they do seem a match. Become sworn brothers.

[Dai You]: Or go do a blood test for kinship.

[Mao Lengxue]: You guys upstairs are really…

[Dong Shuijing]: …I’m just smiling and not speaking.

[Liu Yixuan]: …Then I’ll just smile too.

Xie Lan felt a bit guilty looking at his phone, so he simply put it away.

After a long while, he said, “Why don’t you change your name?”

“Hmm?” Dou Sheng looked up, a hint of teasing in his eyes. “Why?”

Xie Lan glanced at him twice, then turned his head away speechlessly.

Dou Sheng chuckled low. “Then what should I change it to? How about ‘Effective Prescription’?”

Xie Lan: “…”

Dou Sheng rested his chin in his hand and thought. “Cure for the Disease?”

“…”

“Then, ‘Good Medicine Tastes Bitter’?” Dou Sheng smiled, leaning in to whisper in Xie Lan’s ear, “It’s not bitter, right? I even ate chocolate beforehand last night.”

“…”

Xie Lan pushed him away by the chest. “Get lost.”

Damn it, Dou Sheng is so annoying.

---

Xie Lan felt he did well on the third monthly exam.

The Chinese exam was a bit difficult this time. The classical poetry reading was very obscure, basically a write-off; there was also a modern text that was too hazy, unintelligible from start to finish. But Xie Lan felt his composition was written well. For the first time, he filled the full 800-character requirement, split into four small paragraphs. He estimated he could get at least 37 or 38 points just for the essay, putting a total Chinese score of 70 within reach.

The results didn’t come out during Sunday evening self-study. On Monday morning, the grade-wide ranking list was posted directly in the corridor.

Xie Lan ran over to check the scores. Dou Sheng had reclaimed the top spot on the list, with a total score of 731.

Last time, Xie Lan ranked 215. This time, he looked directly within the top 200. Scanning briefly, he found it.

The rank was on the right. He read from right to left—improved 40 places in the grade, ranked 175. Science comprehensive three subjects: 267, ten points higher than last time. English: 139, level. Math: 150, level. Chinese: 59…

Hmm? Still 59?

Xie Lan froze for a moment. Dou Sheng asked in a low voice, “Didn’t you say your Chinese could top 70 this time?”

“Yeah…” Xie Lan frowned. “Did I go off-topic on the essay again? Below thirty points?”

It shouldn’t be.

Che Ziming spoke from the side, “Chen Ge flew up so fast.”

Hearing this, Xie Lan looked further down the list. Last time Chen Ge was outside the top 350; this time he was at 240, already very close to Xie Lan.

“That’s less than a month, and he even played basketball for a week.” Dai You tutted, rotating his wrist. He laughed, “The Twin Heroes of Class 4 really are terrifying.”

The morning self-study bell rang. The group walked back while discussing scores. Once at his seat, Dou Sheng whispered, “Don’t be upset. Wait for the papers to be handed out and we’ll find the problem.”

“I’m not upset.” Xie Lan sighed. “It’s just a bit strange. It shouldn’t be this score. Did I write the wrong characters for all the classical poetry fill-in-the-blanks?”

That couldn’t be it either; this time, it happened to test the few pieces he could recite proficiently. His requirements for himself were clear: leave extracurricular reading to fate, but get full marks on anything that could be achieved through rote memorization.

The subject representatives came down to collect homework. Che Ziming had to collect an extra competition training paper. When he got to Dong Shuijing, he said “Eh?” and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Xie Lan subconsciously glanced over. Dong Shuijing stood up from her desk, whispered something, pulled out a paper, and gave it to him.

Her eyes were a bit red. Che Ziming paused for a moment before walking back, not asking further questions.

Dou Sheng said quietly, “Chen Ge is probably leaving soon.”

“Huh?” Xie Lan turned his head blankly.

He paused for a while before remembering Chen Ge mentioning he was leaving City H when they were out playing.

Xie Lan asked, “Where is he going?”

Dou Sheng shook his head. “Didn’t ask. He probably doesn’t want to say either. Given his family conditions, he can’t go ‘up’. He just wants to find a small place to mao (hide/cat) away, and quietly take the college entrance exam.”

Xie Lan frowned. “What does ‘mao away’ mean?”

Dou Sheng smiled. “It means to hide, just like a wutong leaf, lying motionless in a corner so as not to attract others’ attention.”

Xie Lan’s eyes lit up. “That expression is very good. Very concise, just like that character you taught me last time.”

“Hmm?” Dou Sheng asked casually while flipping through homework. “What character did I teach you?”

“The Dou character that represents the four great joys.” Xie Lan grabbed a pen and wrote “Dou-An” (豆安) on the scratch paper between them.

Dou Sheng said “Oh,” and laughed. “I was teasing you last time.”

He finished speaking, turned around to hand in an assignment, and when he looked back, he saw Xie Lan with a frozen expression.

Dou Sheng asked, “What’s wrong?”

Xie Lan: “……?”

Language could hardly describe Xie Lan’s shock at this moment.

Shock mixed with confusion.

Within the confusion was a destructive urge ready to erupt.

And a little bit of fear.

He wanted to flee back to London.

The class bell rang just then. Old Qin walked into the classroom holding a thick stack of Chinese papers. “Representative, please close the door.”

He slammed the papers onto the lectern with a bang, and immediately picked up the top one. “Xie Lan.”

The “owls” keenly sensed something. One by one, they turned their heads, shooting Xie Lan small looks of sympathy and anticipation.

Xie Lan’s expression was hollow. After a long time, he whispered, “Xie Lan seems to be absent.”

Old Qin smiled. “Is that so?”

He flipped through to the composition sheet with a swish-swish-swish. “The topic for this essay was four words: Ren Jian Xi Le (Human Joy). Student Xie Lan’s essay structure has improved greatly. Rain after a long drought, name on the gold list, wedding night, meeting an old friend—these four angles, while cliché, are safe. Theoretically, this essay could have scored a thirty-eight, or even over forty. But in the end, it only got twenty-five points.”

Xie Lan stared vacantly at the dust in the air, trying hard not to hear.

Dou Sheng, shocked, whispered from the side, “You… you didn’t write that character, did you?”

Xie Lan gave a light smile to the void and whispered, “I think I might want to kill you.”

Old Qin continued to wonder aloud, “But throughout this entire essay, you used a character that the senior high Chinese department doesn’t recognize. A Dou (bean) on the left, an An (peace) on the right. How is this character pronounced?”

The class instantly exploded; everyone began discussing it at once.

“Left side Dou, right side An?” Che Ziming frowned in confusion. “Is that a character?”

Under Old Qin’s gaze, thirsty for knowledge, Xie Lan’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He said stiffly, “It’s pronounced Dou.”

“Dou?” Old Qin paused. “And what does it mean?”

Dou Sheng put a hand to his forehead to hide his expression and started pinching his own thigh.

He quickly wrote a line of text and pushed it over: Kill me. I plead guilty and accept the law.

Xie Lan lowered his eyes to glance at the line, then let out a cold laugh, carrying the fearless disdain of a character creator.

“It is said to be the collection of all human joys.”

“Oh—” Old Qin realized. “No wonder your essay title was: Human Dou-An.”

Amidst the confused roars of laughter from the whole class, Xie Lan ground his foot ruthlessly into Dou Sheng’s foot under the desk.

“Do you know what day it is today?” he asked in a low voice.

Dou Sheng hummed, his tone peaceful. “The day of my death.”

Xie Lan smiled. “En. The dorm desk is quite cool. It’s getting hot; tonight you sleep on the desk.”

“Okay, no problem. It’s good for straightening the back,” Dou Sheng agreed immediately. “Any other arrangements?”

Xie Lan continued to smile. “I can’t read the Xinhua Dictionary.”

“Understood.” Dou Sheng nodded. “I’ll hand-copy a volume for you.”

---

Finally surviving until the end of Chinese class, the classroom was full of laughter and chatter as always. Some people took out unfinished breakfasts to eat; more stood at the front of the classroom continuing to look at the newly posted grade list.

The back door was noisy too. Xie Lan was coldly watching Dou Sheng copy the dictionary, listening to Wang Gou and Che Ziming practicing a comedy routine at the back door. After listening for a while, those two suddenly went quiet.

Subsequently, that silence radiated from the back door into the classroom. Before long, the whole class was silent.

It wasn’t quite like when Hu Xiujie suddenly appeared; there was no aura of death.

The people in the front turned their heads one after another to look at the back door.

Chen Ge stood at the back door of Math-Physics A, his backpack bulging, two school uniform jackets draped over his arm.

They hadn’t seen him since the basketball game ended. He had shaved his head into a buzz cut; his whole head was covered in short stubble. The sense of uninhibited carelessness was gone; his brows and eyes were sharp and distinct.

The room was silent. Only he smiled easily.

“Long time no see, everyone.”

Stunned for two seconds, people began to greet him one after another.

Chen Ge said, “I’m leaving today. Completed the transfer. Just came to take a photo of something.”

Dai You asked subconsciously, “Photograph what?”

“Just come in, don’t stand there like a fool outside.”

“Yeah, we’re all family.”

“Where are you transferring to, Brother Chuan (Boat)?”

“Yeah, tell us so we can come find you to hang out.”

“Will you come back for the Gaokao (College Entrance Exam)?”

Chen Ge smiled. “I won’t be back for the Gaokao. We probably won’t see each other again until after the exams.”

He walked with large strides from the corridor to the front door, passed the podium, and used a phone with a cracked screen to carefully photograph the grade list next to the blackboard.

From the first mock exam in freshman year, he took photos one by one, all the way to this semester’s placement exam.

And the four pasted characters above the grade list: Bai Ge Zheng Liu (Hundred Barges Competing in the Current).

“Ah, then what if we miss you?”

“Right, won’t you miss us?”

Chen Ge put the phone back in his pocket. “If I miss you, I’ll watch Douzi and Xie Lan’s videos. If you miss me… then just miss me.”

The classroom instantly erupted into laughter. Chen Ge smiled faintly too. Having taken the photos, he was ready to leave. Passing by Dong Shuijing’s desk, he casually placed an owl doll holding a “Pride” round plate on her desk and whispered, “Help me keep this safe. Thanks.”

Dong Shuijing didn’t make a sound; she tucked the item into her school bag.

“I’m off. College entrance exams next year—Class 4, jiayou (add oil/good luck).”

Chen Ge stood at the classroom door, paused, and turned back to wave at everyone.

“Everyone, let’s meet at the summit.”