Early morning, exactly six o’clock.

Lin Zhu opened his eyes right on time. His biological clock was very fixed; whether he was a high school freshman or a senior, he always woke up at this exact time without fail, even more sensitive than an alarm clock.

The first thing he did after waking up was grab the phone by his pillow and open WeChat for a look.

Yan Ruoyun’s WeChat avatar was pinned at the very top.

With a swipe of his fingertip, Lin Zhu tapped into their chat interface.

Actually, there were only two chat logs in total.

Last night, the two had wished each other ‘good night’ before going to sleep, and that was it.

Holding his phone, Lin Zhu debated whether he should take the initiative to send Yan Ruoyun a ‘good morning,’ but he was also afraid the man hadn’t woken up yet… It wouldn’t be good to disturb his rest.

As he thought about this, he got out of bed.

He opened the window.

The cool, damp air from outside rushed in all at once.

Only then did Lin Zhu realize that there had actually been a light rain last night.

The sky was as blue as if it had been washed clean. The greenery coverage in the residential complex was very high, and clear dewdrops hung from the large branches, shining brightly under the newly risen morning sun. When a gust of wind blew past, they flickered and danced among the leaves.

The scenery was good, and so was the weather.

Lin Zhu walked over to the balcony, rested his elbows on the railing, and took a deep breath. Looking down again, he suddenly noticed that Yan Ruoyun’s chat interface was displaying “The other party is typing…”

The next second.

The phone vibrated twice, and chat bubbles popped up one after another next to the other party’s avatar.

[Yan Ruoyun: Awake this early?]

[Yan Ruoyun: I’ve been waiting for you to type for a long time. What did you want to say?]

Lin Zhu pursed his lips, keeping his head down as he typed rapidly on the phone keyboard, completely unaware that the corners of his mouth were curving up slightly.

[Lin Zhu: Nothing, just wanted to say, good morning.]

The other side once again displayed “Typing…”, but he waited for quite a while without receiving Yan Ruoyun’s message. Just as he was about to send a question mark over, a message finally came through.

——Yan Ruoyun sent him a selfie.

To call it a selfie was a stretch, as the person in the lens didn’t even show his face.

The environment in the photo was dim. The man was lying on his side on the bed wearing light gray pajamas, with most of his face buried in the pillow, maximally exposing the back of his neck to reveal the still-swollen gland.

The two overlapping rings of bite marks imprinted on the gland were partially aligned and partially offset. The indentations from the canine teeth were exceptionally deep and heavy, making this patch of skin look rather tragic, as if it had been thoroughly ravaged.

[Yan Ruoyun: I have to go to the company later. I might need to switch to a large-sized barrier patch to cover it up.]

Lin Zhu reached back to touch the back of his own neck. He wasn’t sure if it was due to his Alpha physique, but his gland recovered very quickly; not only was it not swollen, but even the bite marks had faded significantly.

Feeling very embarrassed, he typed out two words: [I’m sorry.]

As soon as he sent it, the other side tossed back a line:

[Yan Ruoyun: What about you?]

Lin Zhu replied with an ‘I’m fine’, then blindly snapped a photo of the back of his own neck and sent it over, taking the initiative to report: [I have to go to school in a bit too.]

[Yan Ruoyun: Are you really being this good?]

Lin Zhu’s gaze lingered on that word ‘good’ for several seconds. His face suddenly grew hot, but the movements of his hands didn’t stop: […Yeah, I promised you.]

Yan Ruoyun didn’t reply again.

Because he directly initiated a video call.

The mid-to-high-level balcony was very quiet, surrounded only by crisp bird calls. The sudden and loud volume of the phone ringtone made Lin Zhu involuntarily scramble in a flurry.

He first ruffled his bedhead a couple of times, then touched the corners of his eyes to confirm his face was clean, before finally answering the video call and whispering a greeting: “Morning, Yan, uh… Mr. Yan?”

One sentence, and he stuttered a few times.

The main issue was that he didn’t know how he should address Yan Ruoyun. Calling him ‘Mr. Yan’ seemed too distant, but the age gap between them wasn’t small. If he directly called him by his name…

Wouldn’t that be too brazen and disrespectful?

Lin Zhu felt very conflicted in his heart, his brows furrowing slightly. He didn’t notice that the angle of the phone’s front camera was tilted slightly downward, making him look extremely impatient, as if he had accumulated a full tank of morning grouchiness and was about to explode.

At this moment, a few low chuckles came from the phone’s receiver.

In the video, Yan Ruoyun seemed to have just woken up not long ago as well. He was sitting up from the bed, getting up to walk toward the bathroom. The neckline of the gray pajamas he wore was loose, unable to cover his straight collarbones, and exposed a large patch of skin on his chest.

The environment went from dark to bright.

Lin Zhu silently watched the man in the video stand in front of the sink, place the phone on the shelf in front of him, and say to the camera, “Calling me that makes it seem like we’re particularly unfamiliar with each other.”

Indeed.

Lin Zhu paused, then somewhat tentatively called out two words.

“…Ruoyun?”

In the video, the man was currently closing his eyes to wipe the water droplets from his face. Hearing this, he couldn’t help but start laughing again.

His upper body leaned slanted against the wall, the curve of his neck long and slender. “I’ve been called that by my parents for over twenty years, so why does it feel so exceedingly strange when it’s switched to you?”

“Ah, I know…” The man thought for a moment and found the reason. “It might be because you are much younger than me. When I was in high school, you had just started elementary school.”

Lin Zhu fell silent for a moment, then asked in return, “Then what should I call you?”

Yan Ruoyun had just washed his face. His eyelashes were clumped together, making his features look exceptionally dewy and translucent. Staring at the slightly listless youth on the other end of the video, he raised an eyebrow and suggested, “Why don’t you just try calling out a few titles casually, and I’ll see how it sounds?”

Lin Zhu nodded with difficulty: “…Oh.”

If this were a campus romance, the two could simply call each other by their names. But his and Yan Ruoyun’s social statuses were completely different, and the gap in their age and life experience was huge. Lin Zhu pondered bitterly for a long time, and finally called out slowly,

“——Ge?”

As soon as the words fell, the other end of the video descended into silence.

Yan Ruoyun’s expression was a bit weird at first, but he quickly savored the aftertaste of it.

“Try calling it one more time?”

Lin Zhu was very obedient, smoothly accommodating him: “Ge.”

He saw the man in the video holding the phone with one hand, while his other hand seemingly unintentionally touched his earlobe, muttering to himself: “Yeah, it still sounds a bit awkward.”

Actually, Lin Zhu thought it was fine, but he still asked: “Then should we change it to something else?”

Yan Ruoyun lowered his hand: “Forget it, let’s just go with this.”

Lin Zhu gave an honest ‘Oh’, and then quietly watched the man in the video wash up and groom himself.

During this time, the two casually chatted from time to time, occasionally meeting each other’s eyes. Even though they hadn’t said any restricted-level topics, an indescribable ambiguity inexplicably overflowed…

A few minutes later.

The man exited the bathroom and arrived at the walk-in closet.

He selected the business suit he was going to wear today and said to the camera, “I’m going to change clothes.”

Lin Zhu snapped back to reality and quickly responded, “Oh, then should I hang up?”

Before he could press the red hang-up button, he suddenly heard Yan Ruoyun say unhurriedly: “No need, I’ll just place the phone face down. You can keep talking.”

Just now, the two had been chatting about him going to school.

For some reason, Lin Zhu subconsciously scratched his cheek. Moving his gaze away from the now-blackened video call interface, he gazed at the artificial lake scenery in the distance and continued:

“I plan to apply to transfer from the study-abroad prep class to the regular class and take the domestic college entrance examination.”

The elite private school he attended had set up a prep class geared toward studying abroad. It was filled with students whose families had money but whose grades were poor, pinning their hopes on going overseas to get a gilded degree.

There weren’t many people in the class, totaling less than twenty.

Lin Zhu was one of them.

The rustling sound of clothing fabric rubbing together came from the phone’s receiver, which abruptly stopped after Lin Zhu finished speaking. Then came the man’s voice, his tone solemn.

“Lin Zhu, I just don’t want you to keep muddling along through life like before. Are you sure you’ll be able to keep up with the pace if you transfer to the regular class now?”

“I don’t want to put so much pressure on you right when we’ve just started dating.”

Lin Zhu, who had been an active high school senior taking the college entrance exam just a few days ago, didn’t feel any great pressure, but he couldn’t avoid the exhaustion of repeating his senior year… However, thinking that this was an ABO world and the academic subjects might differ from the real world, Lin Zhu felt a bit curious again.

He rubbed his nose and replied, “I’ve thought it through clearly. I’ll just try it out first.”

Honestly speaking, in his past eighteen years, he rarely had this kind of experience of discussing his future plans and intentions with someone close to him…

Lin Zhu suppressed the novelty rising in his heart and couldn’t help asking for Yan Ruoyun’s opinion,

“Ge, what do you think?”

After he finished speaking, the black screen of the video interface regained its picture.

Yan Ruoyun had flipped the phone over, placing it on the shelf in front of him. Then, while tying his tie in front of the mirror, he said, “If you want to try, then try. At worst, I’ll carve out some time to tutor you.”

Lin Zhu: “…”

It probably wouldn’t come to that, right?

From childhood to adulthood, he had never attended a cram school, yet his academic grades were always among the top.

Lin Zhu then remembered that it was written in the original novel that Yan Ruoyun had graduated from a top domestic university with extremely outstanding grades at the age of nineteen. Immediately after, he had parachuted into the Yan Corporation, remaining busy with work for so many years, taking the family business to an even higher level.

His resume was more brilliant than most people’s.

For such a person to actually say he wanted to help tutor him…

Lin Zhu rubbed his nose, preemptively refusing: “No need, aren’t you very busy with work?” In his words and tone, he didn’t doubt in the slightest that Yan Ruoyun was just casually saying it, or just teasing him for fun.

Yan Ruoyun glanced at him several times, and noticing that the youth’s expression was quite serious, he changed his tune: “Alright, then do your best on your own. If you perform well, I’ll give you a reward.”

Lin Zhu had never heard this kind of talk before. He only felt the tips of his ears grow soft and hot, and couldn’t resist asking, “What reward?”

…

It wasn’t until the call was hung up that Lin Zhu clearly saw his own expression through the darkened screen—his drooping eyes still looked world-weary and listless, but the corners of his mouth, which habitually pressed into a straight line, now hung with a very faint smile, making him look far less like a delinquent.

The chat interface displayed the duration of his video call with Yan Ruoyun.

They had actually chatted for almost half an hour??

Lin Zhu was shocked. This was the first time he realized he could actually be such a chatterbox. Suddenly, he understood those campus couples he had seen in the past who would readily chat on the phone for an hour or two.

He put down his slightly hot phone and also began to wash up and change clothes.

It had to be said, the scumbag ex-husband really didn’t go to school much. Lin Zhu rummaged through the closet for a long time before he managed to dig out the elite private middle school uniform from the deepest corner.

This uniform bore zero resemblance to the baggy, blue-and-white striped tracksuits Lin Zhu used to wear. Instead, it was an ink-blue suit uniform, with the school name and emblem hand-stitched on the breast pocket.

Although he found the uniform, Lin Zhu searched for a long time but couldn’t find a schoolbag or textbooks, and he had not the slightest impression of them in his memories. He had no choice but to leave the house empty-handed.

Fifteen minutes later.

Lin Zhu stood at the school gate and suddenly fell into silence.

…Yeah, originally he thought the college entrance exams were over, so he had dyed his hair an exaggerated color. As a result, in the blink of an eye, he was back in the early stages of his senior year.

But his hair was still yellow.

Should he cut it off?

Just as this thought flashed through his mind, Lin Zhu abruptly remembered that utterly tragic car crash.

…Better just forget about it.

For at least a year.

He didn’t want to go anywhere near a barber shop.

Fortunately, based on his observations, quite a few of the male and female students being dropped off by luxury cars had permed or dyed hair, just not in colors as eye-catching as his.

When he walked through the school gate, the security guard just gave him a customary glance, unsurprised, and didn’t stop him.

Lin Zhu struggled to search for the classroom’s location from his memories. After looking for quite a while, he finally successfully found the study-abroad prep class.

There weren’t many people in the classroom, but the decibel level of their laughing and shouting was very high, tangling together into a chaotic mess. The teenage boys and girls wearing the elite school uniforms all looked glamorous and bright. Desks were topped with phones, gaming consoles, and cosmetics, but one rarely saw a textbook.

Lin Zhu silently entered through the back door, walking toward an empty seat against the wall in the back row.

The two-person desk was already occupied by another boy.

Lin Zhu couldn’t tell what gender he was, only noticing from the back door that he was wearing a pair of glasses and was completely engrossed in reading a book without lifting his head once, seemingly someone who really loved to study…?

The other party’s drawer was also stuffed full of books.

Lin Zhu wanted to borrow a textbook from him to see how the high school textbooks in the ABO world differed from those in his original world.

And so, after walking closer, he asked very politely,

“Classmate, can I sit on the inside?”

As soon as the words fell, he saw the boy close the book in his hands, revealing a full-color cover featuring two scantily clad men intertwined together.

In the center of the cover was a line of stylized, artistic font:

100 Ways to Make the Aloof Academic God Cry

Lin Zhu: “……………”

The system secretly popped its head out: “Ah, it’s a novel.”