Xie Lan became famous throughout Yinghua High.

The speed of gossip transmission from person to person was extremely fast. When he was reading the script under the national flag, there were only a few small clusters of students from other grades on the playground. But by the time Xie Lan returned to class and sat in his seat, the back door was crowded with people—a large number of unfamiliar faces “inadvertently” passing by the back door, accidentally packing the hallway outside Math & Science Class A until not a drop of water could leak through.

Perhaps because of the sheer number of people, the sounds of discussion grew increasingly arrogant. It was as if a group of high monks were standing outside the door chanting the “Xie Lan Mantra.” Xie Lan lowered his head, tracing the copybook Old Qin had given him, his ears buzzing.

—His current nickname in the jianghu (social circles) was “The Class A Hottie who Shocked Hu Xiujie for a Whole Year.” The boys said he was “the mighty dragon daring to coil around the local snake,” while the girls said, “started for the gossip, stayed for the face.” There were even some slackers, dominated daily by Hu Xiujie, who came to join the fun, hailing Xie Lan as their “Spiritual Leader.”

Xie Lan was speechless. His fountain pen scratched a hole in the tracing paper; he was so annoyed he wanted to punch someone.

The seat next to him was empty. The wind blew the curtains, brushing lightly over the empty desk.

Che Ziming turned his head, adopting a bizarre tone of voice. “You are in big trouble, my little partner!”

Wang Gou immediately started playing along. “Ye—es! Oh, my sweet heart, look at what that heartless thing has pitted you into?”

Che Ziming: “If I were you, and I mean if, I would definitely beat him up soundly!”

Wang Gou: “Oh, stop saying such things. Oh, Xie Lan, baby, if you want to cry, just cry it out. Jesus is with you; let us fiercely curse that heartless thing!”

Xie Lan raised his eyes expressionlessly to look at them. “Want to fight?”

Che Ziming almost fell off his chair, wiping away tears of laughter. “You’re allowed to speak Classical Chinese, but we aren’t allowed to use ‘Translation-ese’? You are too fcking funny. Fck, how did Class 4 end up with a mascot like you?”

Xie Lan looked at his happy, smiling face without a ripple of emotion. His fists clenched tight. After a long time, he angrily closed the copybook.

After the speech under the flag, Hu Xiujie didn’t even listen to Dou Sheng’s portion. She called Dou Sheng directly into the office and let Xie Lan come back first.

It had been almost twenty minutes.

Xie Lan glanced at the empty seat beside him again and threw his pen down in irritation. “In this situation, how does Hu Xiujie usually handle it?”

Che Ziming waved his hands repeatedly. “Don’t ask me, I’ve never seen this situation. Why don’t you go ask the principal? They’ve been colleagues for twenty years; ask if he’s ever seen this situation?”

Yu Fei propped himself up from the desk, took off his headphones, turned back, and said spookily, “As expected of you.”

Xie Lan: “…”

He caught a glimpse of Dou Sheng’s Bilibili avatar on the phone screen Yu Fei was holding. He froze for a moment, suddenly having a bad premonition.

Yu Fei handed the phone over in a friendly manner. “Want to see?”

—Ten minutes ago, when Dou Sheng was theoretically being dominated by Hu Xiujie, his account had actually posted a short video update.

The video was recorded with a phone. The lens was pointed at the empty ground beneath the flagpole, showing the national flag and a corner of Xie Lan’s shadow on the ground.

The secretly filmed footage was very shaky, but it didn’t affect the experience of reliving the nightmare in the slightest. Xie Lan trembled all over as he listened to himself finish reading that huge pile of nonsense, and then hesitatingly say, “As expected… of… me.”

It turned out that at that time, the audience below was so silent, and the sound of the wind was so sobbing.

He was so… ready to kill someone.

[@PeerlessHandsomeDou: A teaser trailer. Before the end of this semester, the annual blockbuster documentary will be presented. Watch the Hardcore Returnee Child’s Domestic High School Survival Record — “You Know Nothing About Power.”

Friendly reminder: Watch. To. The. End.]

Damn it, that bitch!!

Yu Fei sighed spookily. “As expected of Dou. He can still post such a long thing while in Hu Xiujie’s office.”

Dai You came over from the front and placed a bottle of coffee on Xie Lan’s desk as a gesture of comfort. “I can only say, brother, my condolences. Under normal circumstances, Douzi—no, he never acts like this. I don’t know what’s wrong with him these past two months; his behavior is becoming increasingly bizarre. Before school started, he was depressed because of the Top 100 Uploader thing, but suddenly he’s so wild he’s about to take off.”

Che Ziming sighed. “What else could it be? Bullying the little friend from outside, of course.”

“Heh.” Xie Lan sneered. “You guys seem to have a misunderstanding of the word ‘bully’.”

Who was bullying whom was not yet decided.

Suddenly, a burst of hooting came from outside. Someone shouted, “Dou Sheng is back!”

As soon as the voice fell, the scraping sound of a table and chair being pushed rang out from the corner of the classroom. Xie Lan stood up and walked straight out, casually rolling up his uniform sleeves. Like a silent cannonball, he cut directly through the crowd and met Dou Sheng, who had just turned the corner in the corridor, face-to-face.

Dou Sheng had been strolling lazily with his hands in his pockets, but upon meeting Xie Lan, he couldn’t help but crack a smile.

Xie Lan reached out and grabbed his collar. His bent knuckles pressed against the hard bone below Dou Sheng’s neck as he gritted his teeth. “Come with me.”

A chorus of boos and whistles erupted behind them. The boys and girls watching the drama were so excited they were pounding the walls.

Xie Lan was two or three centimeters shorter than Dou Sheng, but at this moment, he felt his gaze was compelling, his momentum towering more than a notch higher. He gripped Dou Sheng’s collar, dragging his upper body closer, and said through clenched teeth, “Didn’t you hear? Come. With. Me.”

Dou Sheng took his hands out of his pockets, laughing softly. “We agreed not to get angry.”

Xie Lan’s black eyes turned cold. “Who agreed with you?”

Dou Sheng smiled cloud-lightly and wind-gently, tutting. “It’s for the video, we talked about this. Have some contract spirit. Where are we going?”

The only place nearby to avoid these people was the staff men’s restroom.

Before Xie Lan could speak, Dou Sheng realized it himself. He raised an eyebrow. “Let go, I’ll walk myself.”

There were simply too many people in the corridor. Dong Shuijing had to grab Wen Zisen and come out to shoo people away. Xie Lan wore a cold face as he passed through the melon-eating crowd. Dou Sheng followed lazily behind him, reaching out to smooth the collar of his shirt where a button had been pulled open. His slender fingers flattened the wrinkles as he tutted, “So fierce.”

The staff restroom was quiet as usual. After entering, Dou Sheng habitually raised his foot to kick the door shut behind him. However, just as his foot touched the door, Xie Lan pushed him backhand. Dou Sheng stumbled, his back hitting the door—BANG!! He slammed the door into the frame, shaking the earth and swaying the mountains.

The violent sound of the slamming door startled both of them, but the hooting in the corridor grew even more excited.

After a long time, Dou Sheng muttered, “People who don’t know better would think you beat me up… Hu Xiujie is hard enough to deal with, and now you’re this fierce too. My life is so hard.”

Xie Lan raised his hand to grab the collar Dou Sheng had just smoothed out, his black eyes revealing irritation. “What bullsh*t are you spouting?”

“Learning this fragrant language again.” Dou Sheng sighed. “I need to have a talk with Che Ziming about leading the returnee child astray.”

“Don’t drag others into this!”

Xie Lan angrily tried to pull him forward, but Dou Sheng leaned lazily against the door, looking as immovable as Mount Tai.

Instead, it made Xie Lan look like he had to lean forward to maintain his grip on the other’s vitals.

Between inches, their eyes were very close to each other. Dou Sheng looked at him for a while, his gaze shifting down to land on his nose tip, then his lips, before sighing lightly and looking away.

“Stop hitting me.” He assumed a pleading tone. “I’m serious, Hu Xiujie is so tough to deal with. I just escaped from the tiger’s mouth, just let me off.”

Xie Lan remained cold and unmoved. “What was that video just now about?”

Dou Sheng sighed lowly. “It was written very clearly in the update. We agreed to release this kind of video, a Hardcore High School Survival Record.”

Xie Lan let out a heh. “Is the school hardcore, or are you hardcore?”

“This teaser was indeed a bit explosive, to whet the appetite. I’ll try to be more subtle later, so you don’t get such a big scare. But you can think about this project again. If you’re afraid, forget it. It’s totally OK for me to tell everyone it’s cancelled.”

As Dou Sheng spoke, he reached for his phone. Xie Lan glared at him, panting with rage, and reached out to grab his wrist.

“Who’s afraid?”

The enclosed space fell into a subtle silence.

Xie Lan said coldly, “Make your video. Whatever the footage, release it properly at the end of the semester. Understand? Let’s see what your video turns out to be in the end—a Returnee Child’s Survival Record, or a Problem Youth Taming Diary.”

Dou Sheng looked up at him for a moment, his eyes full of smiles. “Listening to you… are you declaring war?”

“Heh.” Xie Lan sneered, paused, then asked, “What does declaring war mean?”

“Pfft.” The tension in Dou Sheng’s body suddenly dissolved into laughter. After laughing for a long time, he couldn’t help but rest his hand on Xie Lan’s shoulder. “Sigh, I’m so happy today.”

Xie Lan watched him laugh, remaining cool and silent.

The staff restroom faced the sun; it was a bright bathroom. Sunlight poured in through the not-quite-closed blinds. From the tip of Dou Sheng’s chin downwards, all the way to the skin exposed at his collar, bars of slender light were cast upon him. Dou Sheng’s eyes were famously black in the shade, the bottom of his eyes filled with a smile, holding the coolness of early summer.

He stood lazily leaning against the door. Xie Lan leaned forward, blocking him. For a moment, Xie Lan suddenly felt a subtle weirdness in the relative positions between the two of them.

After a long time, he speechlessly pushed Dou Sheng’s hand off his shoulder, stood up straight, and said, “Footage is footage, pitting me is pitting me. What do you have to say?”

Dou Sheng immediately held up his left index and middle fingers to swear to the heavens. “I know I was wrong. Starting today, I begin labor reform.”

Xie Lan was annoyed. “What is labor reform?”

“Labor reformation. From now on, you don’t need to line up for lunch in the cafeteria, just sit and wait for me to bring it. For evening cleaning duty, I’ll do the work, you watch. If you want to eat anything between classes, just command it, I’ll buy it. I’ll cover your milk tea too. You love ‘Chang’an’, right? Every afternoon break, rain or shine.”

Dou Sheng paused, then smiled beamingly. “Lord Second Cat, take a look, what other services would you like to add to the Labor Reform Grand Gift Package?”

Only when Xie Lan heard the last sentence did his expression finally soften a bit.

Milk tea was acceptable. Running outside the West Gate was too far; a round trip took fifteen minutes. Usually, he was too lazy to move even if he wanted to drink it. He stared at Dou Sheng for a good while, and finally added fiercely, “I will counterattack. Just wait.”

Dou Sheng nodded with a smile. “Okay, I’ll wait for you.”

---

Coming out of the restroom, the corridor was dead silent. The people from before had scattered.

Xie Lan walked two steps and felt something was wrong. He looked up and discovered the reason.

Hu Xiujie herself was standing at the door of Class 4, her face looking like it was covered by a sheet of iron, resembling a bionic human from a cyberpunk movie.

Xie Lan, who had just established his dominance, suddenly felt his back go numb. He tried hard to remain calm and walked up to Hu Xiujie.

Hu Xiujie spoke coldly: “Two thousand word self-criticism. Write it yourself. Hand it in to my office tomorrow morning.”

Xie Lan was silent for a long time. “Teacher, why don’t you just stab me instead?”

Hu Xiujie: “Three thousand.”

“…………”

Xie Lan nodded like a dead man and turned into the classroom. Dou Sheng stopped behind him, facing Hu Xiujie.

Hu Xiujie: “You. Five thousand word vernacular self-criticism. Requirement: profound and detailed. If there is one sentence that isn’t ‘human language,’ rewrite it with double the length. Since you like Classical Chinese so much, add another two thousand word Classical Chinese self-criticism. You cannot directly translate the vernacular draft. Once written, pass it to Teacher Qin first. If there are more than five errors in characters or grammar, rewrite it.”

Xie Lan was numb just listening to it. So people can be tortured like this.

He turned his head to look at Dou Sheng in a daze, but Dou Sheng nodded casually and said easily, “No problem. Anything else?”

Hu Xiujie gave him one word: “Scram.”

“Alrighty.”

---

Xie Lan basically didn’t listen to a single class all day.

During the last two math periods in the morning and the first two English periods in the afternoon, Xie Lan had his head buried in writing the self-criticism. By the time he reached the fourth page, he even suspected his handwriting had gotten a workout and his Chinese level had improved.

True fact: Hu Xiujie takes you to learn Chinese.

Finally surviving until the interval exercises, with the self-criticism halfway done, Xie Lan shook his somewhat numb wrist, looking like he had lost the will to live.

Dou Sheng pressed on the desk and vaulted to the front seat, struggling to bypass him to get out. “I’m going to buy milk tea.”

Xie Lan said without looking up, “Go.”

“Chang’an, full sugar, add a portion of cheese foam?”

“You know and you still ask?”

Before leaving, Dou Sheng smiled and pressed a hand on his head. “Prickly all over.”

Xie Lan looked up with an annoyed face, but Dou Sheng had already strode far away, leaving him only a back view that he could see but couldn’t hit.

Infuriating.

He always messed with his hair! He should just shave his head, tie the hair into a fur ball, and throw it to Dou Sheng as a keychain so he could touch it in his pocket every day.

Scare this bean-sized coward to death.

Xie Lan huffed coldly, put down his pen, and looked at the messy stuff he had written.

After a long time, he sighed and took out his phone to rest for a while.

The Grassland Concert video passed the review in the morning, and the view count was already very high. The fans who posted the livestream recording last night deleted it themselves to make way for the official video. The data growth completely met expectations, and the number of coins given was scary.

Xie Lan glanced at the comment section first; unsurprisingly, it was all praise. The professional ones wrote long reviews analyzing his arrangement and instrumentation, while the amateurs spammed paragraphs of praise. In the replies, people occasionally cued “Night God”—rumor had it Night God had the bad luck to livestream yesterday too, showing everyone a remix of an electric guitar segment he just played with other sound effects on his computer. The result was that apart from hardcore fans, everyone left, all snatched away to watch the once-in-a-lifetime flash mob grassland concert.

Xie Lan felt no ripples in his heart. He scrolled down quickly, then clicked to play the video.

The small symphony was light and melodious. Every frame of the visuals was good enough to be a wallpaper. The bullet comments were all crying with genuine emotion.

• Healed my heart, grateful.
• It’s really so good. Let’s study hard together this summer.
• Want to learn arranging from Second Cat, the adaptation is amazing.
• Want to lie on Xie Lan’s strings and sunbathe.
• Godly editing, I will treasure this forever.
• Everyone looks so good.
• Big Cat keeps secretly looking at Second Cat 5555 (crying)

Xie Lan’s gaze froze. He rewound the video by two seconds, looking at the few frames before the comment “Big Cat keeps secretly looking at Second Cat.”

He hadn’t rested well last night, so his memory of the previous evening was a bit blurry. Some shots seemed familiar, others didn’t.

The melody of the My Neighbor Totoro theme song is composed of major triads. Since the pronunciation of Totoro’s name is a high/mid/low tone rhythm, the chords in the melody were arranged with a similar natural speaking cadence. Whenever Xie Lan played this chord, his left hand vibrated the strings with the same rhythm. Dou Sheng looked sideways from behind the piano, smiling at him, his gaze falling on Xie Lan’s hand, then on his side profile.

A few very light-colored bullet comments floated by at the bottom.

• Beans is so happy recently.
• Visible to the naked eye, he’s smiling in every video.
• He’s so happy.
• My Beans is alive 5555
• Thank you Second Cat!!!
• Kowtowing to Second Cat 5555

Xie Lan unconsciously curled the corners of his mouth. He took a screenshot of this frame, then suddenly felt inexplicably guilty and glanced around.

The long afternoon break was the noisiest time in the classroom. Discussing problems, chatting gossip, secretly playing games, cracking sunflower seeds—everything was happening.

Che Ziming was at Wang Gou’s seat practicing a stand-up comedy duo with him. Yu Fei wasn’t there. No one noticed Xie Lan’s small action at all.

Xie Lan breathed a sigh of relief. Just as he picked up his pen to battle the self-criticism again, a figure suddenly intruded into his peripheral vision.

Slender and petite, the large school uniform jacket hung down to her thighs. Inside, she wore a white T-shirt and a light coffee-colored pleated skirt, a bit like the JK uniform Dou Sheng had bought as a prank before, but not that exaggerated. The skirt length was above the knee, the kind that wouldn’t be interrogated by teachers.

Xie Lan looked up. It was Feng Miao.

Feng Miao, like him, had just come to Class 4 this semester. She was excellent at physics and had a cheerful personality; she was simply the apple of Hu Xiujie’s eye. It just so happened that Hu Xiujie’s previous class representative failed the math placement exam and ran off to the class next door, so Feng Miao had taken over the position.

Xie Lan’s first reaction upon seeing her was a chill in his heart.

“What other instructions does the teacher have?” he asked coolly.

Feng Miao froze, looking at him somewhat at a loss. “Huh?”

Xie Lan paused too.

Looking at this reaction, something wasn’t right.

Feng Miao stood in front of Xie Lan’s desk, her toes unconsciously tapping together. Her facial language and body language were clearly nervous, but with her hands in her jacket pockets, there was a slightly incongruous relaxation.

Xie Lan subconsciously looked at her pockets.

“Nothing.” Feng Miao immediately pulled her uniform back a bit and said, “I collected the weekend homework before evening self-study yesterday. Dou Sheng gave me his physics paper then, but I think I left it on his desk. It’s not in the office, so I came to get it to bring to Old Hu.”

Xie Lan breathed a sigh of relief and gave an “Oh.”

Scared him to death. He thought Hu Xiujie had added another two thousand words—buy three get two free.

Xie Lan glanced at Dou Sheng’s desk, which was full of messy notebooks and scratch paper. Almost half were his daily casual doodles for planning projects. A few homework papers and class notes were sandwiched in between, but even the papers had messy stick figure drawings on them. It was simply unsightly.

“You look for it,” Xie Lan said. “He should have written that paper; I saw it.”

Feng Miao immediately nodded. “Okay, you busy yourself.”

Xie Lan continued to ponder over his self-criticism. He had already used all the words he knew how to write, trying hard to arrange and combine them to look like he was admitting his mistakes. But out of three thousand words, he had only written half. He didn’t know how to bullsh*t anymore.

In his peripheral vision, Feng Miao stood between Yu Fei and Che Ziming’s stools, reaching out to rifle through Dou Sheng’s desk. After flipping for a while, she pulled out a paper and said, “Found it. I’m taking it then. No need to tell him; he didn’t notice anyway.”

Xie Lan gave a hum and didn’t look up.

After she had been gone for a while, Xie Lan finally thought of a new angle to pad another thousand words.

He started a new line and wrote—”This mistake makes me uncontrollably think of my classmates. My behavior brought very bad feelings, sensations, and perceptions to my classmates. If I were them, what would the ‘me’ that I see look like? For example—”

Xie Lan flipped back a few pages, tore off the previous pages, placed them to the side, and comparing them to what he wrote before, started to translate the perspective.

However, he had just written two words when he suddenly put down his pen.

There was an extra sticky note on Dou Sheng’s big white notebook used for video planning.

Pink. The kind of pink that makes one’s scalp numb.

Xie Lan stared for a moment, subconsciously looking up, but Feng Miao was no longer in the classroom.

The people around were still playing and making noise; no one was looking this way. Only he knew that Feng Miao had been here and left something on Dou Sheng’s notebook.

Xie Lan paused, withdrew his gaze, and continued writing the self-criticism.

However, not a few seconds later, he threw down the pen again, looked around, and secretly glanced at that sticky note.

There was no signature on the paper, only two lines of elegant, small regular script—

“Ni ben wu yi chuan tang feng, pian pian gu ju yin shan hong.”

(You did not intend to be the wind passing through the hall, yet your solitary arrogance caused a mountain flood.)

Xie Lan frowned tightly.

He stared at those two lines of small characters. After a long time, he opened the “scan and translate” function on his phone and looked up “Ju” (倨).

[倨 ju] Arrogant.

What does this mean?

Dou Sheng is too arrogant, like a flood on a mountain? “Wind passing through the hall” (draft) is that kind of wind between two open doors—chilly and likely to give people a headache.

—I know you didn’t intend to make people uncomfortable, but you are too arrogant, like a mountain flood? You washed people out?

Xie Lan was a bit confused. At first, he thought it was a note sent by a girl to confess her feelings, but after pondering, it felt like she was scolding Dou Sheng.

But… it didn’t look like it. Feng Miao seemed like a gentle and optimistic girl, and she didn’t seem to have any enmity with Dou Sheng.

If there really was something, it was probably that Dou Sheng didn’t do his homework every day and acted sloppy, driving the class representative crazy.

Xie Lan hesitated for a while, looked down, and blankly wrote a few more words of self-criticism, then suddenly hissed.

Girls are too euphemistic when scolding people. Given Dou Sheng’s temperament, he might mistakenly think she was praising him.

How could this be allowed? How could he let a certain someone be so happy?

Xie Lan dug out a stack of sticky notes from his bag, tore off a pink one he had always despised and never used, looked up a few words first, and then tried hard to write in small regular script, imitating the stroke style from his copybook:

—You disaster of Class 4, this drafty wind, you crashed through my soul like a mudslide.

After writing it, Xie Lan carefully peeled off Feng Miao’s sticky note, put it away in his desk drawer, and then stuck the new one on.

Perfectly straight, handwriting passable. How good.

He paused, then took out his phone and quickly snapped a photo of the note.

Strange and useless material has increased.

__

Author’s Note:

Two little eggs are fighting again.

Bean Egg pressed the paper on the table with a sloppy look: “The naming rights of the Egg House Diary belong to me.”

Lazy Egg roared: “Why? They belong to me!”

Ignoring his protest, Bean Egg said: “Let’s just call it Metamorphosis of the Study-Abroad Egg.”

“You’re talking nonsense!” Lazy Egg clenched his fists: “Call it Daily Life of a Punchable Egg Getting Beaten!”

The Keyboard Typer sighed long and hard, pulling the newspaper away.

“Listen to me,” she said coldly. “Call it The Keyboard Typer Tossed This Bowl of Dog Food.”