That same night, a new thread exploded onto No. 10 High’s school forum:
#School Beauty Steps Up Personally to Flirt with the School Delinquent — the Outcome Was Actually…#
The original post ran seven or eight hundred words.
The poster had been passing by the bus stop closest to the school gate when she accidentally came across the recently much-talked-about JY delinquent. Unable to resist the urge to watch the drama, she and her friend joined the growing crowd. At first, everyone was fairly low-key — huddled together, whispering, sending frantic messages about where they’d spotted the delinquent. That lasted until a girl who was secretly photographing the delinquent forgot to turn off her flash and got caught on the spot.
Just as everyone was bracing themselves for that girl to meet her demise, the delinquent suddenly turned to the girl standing next to him and asked if the other girl had just been taking a sneaky photo of him.
The girl standing next to him shot back with a cool, completely unfazed reply: obviously — what, is she photographing me?
Just as everyone was bracing themselves for this new girl to meet her demise, the delinquent followed up and asked her why the girl had photographed him.
The girl next to him replied impatiently: because you’re an idiot.
Alright, here comes the climax.
Everyone was certain the girl next to him was done for.
But not only did she not meet her end — the delinquent actually dipped his head and gave a fond, indulgent little smile.
Just as everyone was still scrambling to process that plot twist, another climax arrived: a school beauty from one of the humanities classes suddenly materialized and asked the delinquent for his contact information.
At this point the poster felt compelled to editorialize about the school beauty’s approach. Using “academic questions” as an excuse to get someone’s contact information was admittedly clever — but please, would you mind getting your facts straight first? One of you is in the sciences and one of you is in humanities. What exactly are you going to be able to discuss?
Though of course, that’s not the main point.
The main point came next.
When the school beauty asked for his contact information, the delinquent didn’t refuse — instead, he asked the girl standing next to him whether he should give it out.
(Brief aside: the poster simply could not fathom how this delinquent operates without even a single conventional instinct.)
Back to the main event.
The girl next to him looked like she’d locked up from sheer awkwardness. The poster was standing close enough that she could faintly hear the sound of the girl grinding her teeth.
The girl said: give it.
Then came yet another reversal.
The delinquent hadn’t held his phone out for three seconds before he put it away again, and asked the girl next to him for her phone, saying his own was dead.
The girl looked like she was on the very edge of a total meltdown. Just as the poster was wondering if the girl was going to pin the delinquent to the ground and beat him senseless, the girl handed her phone over.
And then!!! Here’s the key part!!!
After the delinquent took it, he — I kid you not — unlocked the phone himself!!!
A girl’s phone!!! And the delinquent knew the password!!! (After reading this, does anyone still not understand what that means…?)
And then.
The delinquent held out the WeChat QR code and said — for the first and only time that evening — something not directed at the girl next to him:
I don’t use WeChat much — this is my deskmate’s. If you have any questions, tell her, and she’ll pass them on to me. !!!! aaaaaaaaaa the poster is dead.
What kind of a breathtakingly beautiful (crossing that out) deskmate connection is this!!!!!!!!!
……
From the moment the thread went up that evening, it had been pinned to the front page, constantly being pushed back to the top:
Reply 1: Poster is the best, claiming first spot —
Reply 2: I was there and I genuinely cannot believe my eyes — is this the delinquent I know? —
Reply 3: It’s him, it’s him, it’s definitely him — our incredibly handsome school delinquent!
……
Reply 37: Honestly I’ve thought for a while now that there was something off about the delinquent and his deskmate’s relationship. Not long after school started, I actually spotted the delinquent buying menstrual pads at the school convenience store… Looking back now, they were probably for his deskmate… And I spent all this time thinking he bought them for his own use…
Reply 38: I have something too!! During the midterms!! My boyfriend was walking and accidentally bumped into the delinquent’s deskmate!! (Though honestly the deskmate was the one walking backwards and not paying attention.) But the delinquent was very coldly demanding that my boyfriend apologize… He’s incredibly protective of her!! —
……
Reply 67: !!! I have one too!!! Our class had PE once and the delinquent’s deskmate got hit by a basketball from Class 14’s court!! And then the delinquent just picked her up and carried her away!! And apparently, to get revenge for her, the delinquent went and beat up the girl from Class 14 too (??)
……
Lin Tao rarely visited the school forum, so she knew nothing about any of this.
It wasn’t until she was back home that evening — having washed up and settled at her computer with QQ open, beginning her usual review session — that at just past eleven, Meng Xin started spamming her like mad on QQ:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Taotao!!! So sweet!!! —
Aaaaaaa you’re famous!! You and the school delinquent are famous!!!! —
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!
“……”
Lin Tao hadn’t even finished typing a single sentence.
After the endless stream of screaming, Meng Xin threw a link at her. “Ignore the title — this post has actually been renamed: Supreme Darling: The Cold-faced School Delinquent and His Little Sweetheart.”
“?”
Lin Tao moved her mouse and clicked on the link. It took over ten seconds for the page to load completely. She quickly skimmed through the original post.
“……”
Lin Tao continued scrolling through the comments. The first few dozen replies were people sharing gossip — some of which she had genuinely no memory of.
She kept scrolling down until she hit Reply 899:
Reply 899: Sharing something — the delinquent actually went out with his deskmate during the National Day holiday —
Reply 900: Sharing something — the delinquent let his deskmate sleep in his bed before —
Reply 901: Sharing something — the delinquent even sang to his deskmate before.
“……”
Without even having to think about it, Lin Tao knew that was Hu Hanghang and the others who’d posted those.
The thread kept getting bumped back to the top nonstop.
Lin Tao refreshed it casually and there was always new content:
Reply 1008: Alright, I’ve got my deskmate — so where’s the love? —
Reply 1098: Would be so nice if I had one too —
Reply 1099: Replying to the above — I’ll dedicate a song to you: “Unfortunately There’s No What If.”
……
Reply 1290: What are we even talking about, winter is only for getting fat, not for falling in love —
Reply 1296: Love is always like this — you have it, I don’t 🙂
Lin Tao couldn’t hold back a laugh when she saw that one.
This thread was like a memory book of her and Jiang Yan, pulling out all the things she’d nearly forgotten and laying them back out in front of her.
She didn’t scroll any further, and clicked open Meng Xin’s messages:
Taotao!! What’s going on between you and your deskmate now?!! —
(Gossip face)
Lin Tao tapped her fingers and typed back: “I don’t really know either. I just feel like… the way things are right now is actually pretty good……”
Meng Xin replied:
Okay I get it —
But haven’t you ever thought about pushing this relationship a step further?!! —
You have no idea — the school delinquent’s appeal right now is seriously through the roof!! —
So many girls in our class are talking about him every single day!! —
And I’ve heard that the number one on the school beauty rankings — that whoever she is — has been asking around about your deskmate lately.
Lin Tao stared at Meng Xin’s messages and fell into deep thought.
Meng Xin sent a few more in a row:
I think the delinquent definitely likes you!! Otherwise why would he talk to you like that tonight?!! —
Why not try confessing? Maybe it’ll work out!!!! —
What if — just what if — someone else makes a move before you do!! You’ll regret it when it’s too late!!
Lin Tao sighed, and typed back:
Confessing sounds easy but doing it is so hard… and how am I supposed to bring it up… just say it to his face — “I like you”??
Lin Tao only had to imagine that scene and she already felt deeply uncomfortable with herself:
Let me think it over some more.
Meng Xin went quiet.
Lin Tao lost her appetite for reviewing too. She casually clicked back into the thread — the reply count had already surpassed two thousand.
Not long after, Meng Xin suddenly pelted her with seven or eight links, all with titles like: How to Confess, How to Confess Without Failing, Ten Confession Techniques, Things to Watch Out For When Confessing, and so on.
“……”
Lin Tao clicked one at random:
Ten Confession Techniques: First, you need to be good-looking. Second, you need to be very good-looking. Third, you need to be extremely good-looking… In summary: just be good-looking and everything else takes care of itself.
“……”
Remarkably insightful.
Lin Tao had no interest in reading further. She was just about to close QQ when Meng Xin threw over a link from a different platform:
Taotao!! You have to read this one!!! I think it’s totally you and the school delinquent!! Trust me!!
She clicked on it casually.
The post was titled: Has Anyone Noticed They’ve Had an Experience That Belongs in a Romance Novel? — and the person who posted it had graduated from high school about a year ago. A college student now.
The gist of the post was this: when the poster started a new school year, she found her deskmate was a notorious school delinquent. At first she was pretty intimidated and didn’t dare talk to him much. The delinquent also wasn’t very talkative, so the two of them coexisted peacefully without incident for over a month.
Until a PE class — during an 800-meter run, the poster tripped and fell. The delinquent was the one who walked her to the infirmary. After that, the two of them started talking because of that incident.
Some time later, the poster realized she seemed to have fallen for her delinquent deskmate — and she also felt like her deskmate was treating her a little differently too.
She told her best friend what was happening. Her best friend urged her to confess. But the poster didn’t quite dare — she was afraid that once she said it out loud, things might not go the way she imagined, and instead break the balance they currently had.
So the poster tucked her feelings away, intending to say something after high school graduation. But before that could happen, rumors spread through school that she and her delinquent deskmate were dating.
Both of them got called in by the teacher, along with their parents, and their seats were changed.
The poster felt aggrieved — they weren’t even actually together. So one evening she skipped self-study to go vent to her friends, and on the way back she ran into her delinquent deskmate.
What happened next went beyond anything Lin Tao could have anticipated.
After her deskmate saw that she’d been crying, he didn’t waste a single word — he confessed on the spot: “I’m pretty fed up. We haven’t even actually gotten together yet. I’m someone who can’t stand being fed up about things. So consider this — do you want to make the early-dating accusation official with me?”
The ending was, of course, sweet, sweet, sweet.
After she and the delinquent got together, the poster learned that he’d liked her from the very first day of school — and that he’d arranged for them to be deskmates.
Later, the two of them were admitted to the same prestigious university through direct enrollment. They’re currently in the same district, same department, same class.
Finishing the post, Lin Tao felt like a brand new world had opened up before her.
She read through it again from the beginning, and when she reached a certain part, she stopped for a very long time.
The room was quiet for a long while, and then came the sound of rapid, urgent typing on a keyboard.
Outside the window the night had grown deep. When the clock’s minute hand passed the number one, the room fell quiet again.
Lin Tao stretched with a long, lazy yawn, clicked her mouse, and closed all the browser windows. She got up, went to wash her face, and then climbed into bed.
Before she put her phone down, she logged back into the forum and updated her post:
Not crashing!! Everyone wait for good news from me! [fist pump.jpg]
Past three in the morning, the internet café outside the school was still noisy with people.
Jiang Yan raised a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, then took off his headset and set it aside. He got up, poured himself a cup of water, came back, and idly clicked open the messages Hu Hanghang and the others had posted in the group chat a few hours earlier:
The gaze of the underage —
The smile of an honest man —
We working folk don’t understand these things.
……
He scrolled upward and saw a thread link. He clicked into it.
A few minutes later.
A soft, quiet laugh.
Jiang Yan leaned back against his chair, his wrist draped over the edge of the desk, long fingers resting on the mouse as he slowly scrolled downward. The drowsiness that had been clouding his eyes swept away entirely, replaced by a faint, lingering smile.
“What are you looking at?” Guan Che leaned over to peek. “……”
Jiang Yan didn’t bother hiding it. He let go of the mouse and rubbed the back of his neck.
Guan Che took the mouse and scrolled through the original post, then gave a quiet laugh. “Didn’t know you had moves like that.”
The boy’s gaze slid over to him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Guan Che shrugged without a care, leaning back and draping an arm over his shoulder. “Do you actually like her?”
Jiang Yan looked at him. Said nothing.
One look at that, and Guan Che understood. Right — he was serious.
Jiang Yan didn’t have many major faults, but there was one thing: he was incredibly bottled up. The more he liked something, the harder it was for him to say it. And yet his possessiveness was overwhelming — he’d often hold it in until the other person was at their wit’s end before he’d actually say what he really felt.
The two of them chatted for a while.
Hu Hanghang, the night owl that he was, surfaced again in the group chat and posted a new link:
Big news!! Second year school delinquent and his deskmate happily united!! —
Hey, are you asleep? There’s a new post about you and Taotao — apparently this one reveals the secret history of your hidden feelings for Taotao.
Jiang Yan didn’t reply to the message. He clicked on the link.
Posted just after one in the morning.
The replies weren’t as numerous as the previous gossip post, but they looked like they all had substance. The poster used the name “Did the School Delinquent Fall for Someone Illicitly Today” and by the looks of it, the account was brand new — according to the gender tag, a male.
“……”
He backed out and scanned the thread title:
The School Delinquent’s Secret History of Hidden Feelings.
“……”
The poster claimed to be a longtime friend of both the school delinquent and his deskmate.
Eyewitness to: how the delinquent had fallen for Lin from the very moment he set foot in the school; how, with them not being in the same class, he’d waited until the midterms and “accidentally” discovered they were assigned to the same examination room — then went to great lengths to strike up a conversation with Lin; and finally, how he’d deliberately failed his last exam — English — just so he could be placed in the same class as Lin.
From there, how the delinquent had done everything in his power after being in the same class as Lin to engineer a situation where they’d end up as deskmates, thus smoothly setting his plan in motion to be closest to the water and win her heart first.
……
At the end of the post, the poster hinted: the delinquent was probably about to confess.
The school delinquent: “……”