A fist crashed heavily against his cheek.

Wen Cheng Ye wiped his lips, staring straight at Qin Ao with challenging eyes, and said, “Of course, I did it on purpose. What else would it be?”

The students didn’t end up fighting on the field and getting red cards with match bans, thanks to Wang Fa’s decisive decision.

But the anger wouldn’t diminish. When they helped Fu Xin Shu back to the locker room, another argument broke out. Qin Ao stood up for Fu Xin Shu, demanding that Wen Cheng Ye apologize to him.

Wen Cheng Ye gave a cold laugh.

This attitude of treating Fu Xin Shu like garbage thoroughly enraged Qin Ao.

All emotions poured out at this moment. He grabbed Wen Cheng Ye’s collar, “What are you pretending to be! We haven’t settled the score from two years ago. You think everyone’s forgotten?”

He cursed while punching.

Wen Cheng Ye’s cheek swelled quickly, but Young Master Wen was never one to take a loss, so he countered with a heavy blow to Qin Ao’s abdomen.

Qin Ao was instantly winded, unable to say anything. He released Wen Cheng Ye’s collar and slowly bent over in pain.

Wen Cheng Ye straightened up, squinting as he looked at everyone in the locker room. There was no warmth in his gaze.

Fu Xin Shu was wrapped in a towel, exposing a slender wrist. Whether from pain or cold, his entire body was trembling.

Yu Ming became frantic, “Fuck your mother! You dare to fight back!” He rushed forward and shoved Wen Cheng Ye aside. Wen Cheng Ye’s back slammed heavily against the locker, and the cold mask on his face finally shattered.

A bone-chilling wind swept by. The damp, cold clouds moved rapidly across the wilderness, and rain pattered on the window frames of the locker room.

Lin Wan Xing felt as if she were wrapped in a drumhead, with someone violently beating drums around her.

It was hard to tell if it was a brawl or a one-sided crushing.

The locker room space was filled with the sounds of fists and insults.

The students fought brutally, landing solid blows.

Lin Wan Xing retreated helplessly to a corner, struggling to breathe. In the chaos, it felt like ice-cold water was dripping on the crown of her head.

She inadvertently looked toward a corner of the locker room.

There, Wang Fa stood with his hands in his pockets, watching everything that was happening in the locker room.

His gaze was calm and detached, like still water.

In her ears, there seemed to still be a rumbling noise from the shouting.

But the floor had already turned into the snow-white hospital tiles.

Yu Prefecture People’s Hospital, lobby.

The hospital was old, but the lobby was crowded with people.

Qin Ao set Fu Xin Shu down on a long bench.

Lin Wan Xing went to queue at the registration window.

There were several people ahead of her.

About an hour earlier, the boys had started fighting in the locker room. The specific process was like a pencil drawing that had been smudged by hand—the edges were chaotic and blurred carbon powder to Lin Wan Xing.

All she knew was that Jin Zi Yang eventually persuaded Wen Cheng Ye to go out for some air, while they brought Fu Xin Shu to the hospital for an examination. The remaining students, worried about Fu Xin Shu, all came along.

Lin Wan Xing looked at her palm. Perhaps because of the cold, wet weather outside, her hand was still trembling slightly.

Her shoulder was lightly tapped, and Lin Wan Xing looked up abruptly to find a handsome but solemn face—it seemed to be Wang Fa.

“Why are you here?” As soon as she spoke, she realized the problem with her question.

Wang Fa said, “Fu Xin Shu said registration might require an ID card, so he asked me to bring it to you.”

Looking down, a white card was visible between his fingers—indeed, it was Fu Xin Shu’s ID card.

Lin Wan Xing reached out to take it, but as she touched the card, her hand was suddenly grasped.

The hand was large, the palm warm and rough. Lin Wan Xing couldn’t help but shudder.

She froze in place as if emerging from underwater. Suddenly, the noisy sounds around her appeared.

The voices of patients, family members, and medical staff poured into her ears. The warm air from the hospital ceiling blew down, and the smell of disinfectant permeated the air.

Lin Wan Xing took a deep breath and began to cough.

Wang Fa gently patted her back. They were half an arm’s length apart, and her forehead unknowingly touched his shoulder a few times.

The snap button at the collar of his windbreaker was ice-cold.

The pungent disinfectant filled her entire lungs, and she finally had a slight feeling of coming back to life.

“I’m fine, it’s just too cold outside,” Lin Wan Xing stood up straight again.

“Go sit down, I’ll handle the registration,” Wang Fa gave her a long look, but in the end, that’s all he said.

Fu Xin Shu sat on a chair in the outpatient hall, with others standing around him like bodyguards.

Wang Fa soon returned from registration and led them through a door from the outpatient hall to the emergency surgery department.

Emergency surgery could be considered one of the busiest departments in the hospital.

Ambulances continuously brought in patients, medical staff ran about busily, and monitoring equipment occasionally sounded.

There were also low, painful moans.

Fu Xin Shu, sitting in a wheelchair rented from the hospital, seemed somewhat frightened by this scene.

“Teacher, my foot doesn’t hurt anymore. I can just go back and ice it for a couple of days,” Fu Xin Shu said in a panic.

Lin Wan Xing crouched in front of him, “Let’s still get it checked. Why are you so nervous? Haven’t you been to the hospital before for soccer injuries?”

“Huh?” Fu Xin Shu’s face paled again. “I… not while playing soccer.”

That’s what he said.

“Fuck him.” Among so many people, someone cursed quietly.

Wang Fa pushed Fu Xin Shu into the examination room. After the doctor’s examination, they quickly came out with a slip to get an X-ray. Outside the radiology department were many people. Wang Fa scanned the registration form on the hospital machine and looked at her.

Lin Wan Xing understood and arranged for the students to stay in a relatively distant corridor, not affecting other patients, and then walked over.

“How many more ahead of us?” Lin Wan Xing asked.

“More than ten, but it shouldn’t be too slow,” Wang Fa answered.

“What’s wrong?”

“Fu Xin Shu had a metatarsal fracture a year ago,” Wang Fa said.

Lin Wan Xing looked back. In the crowd, the boy sat in the wheelchair, his back to them, his figure thin.

She and Wang Fa returned to the students.

The corridor was quiet. For a blank period, none of the twelve people spoke.

The rain beat against the hospital windows, running down the glass.

Qin Ao vigorously rubbed his face with his hand, suddenly crying out in pain.

His face contorted in agony, grimacing, though because of his dark skin, the injuries from fighting with Wen Cheng Ye were not obvious.

“Should we register you too?” Lin Wan Xing asked.

“Damn, register that Wen dog instead. Could his fancy punches hurt me?” Qin Ao said with a grimace.

“Missing Wen Cheng Ye already? But we can’t register him for now. Teacher Jin said he took Wen Cheng Ye on the high-speed train back first.”

“You’re disgusting, teacher,” Qin Ao made a gesture as if about to vomit.

Then came silence again.

“He should have left long ago,” Chen Jiang He said softly.

“We shouldn’t have let him come in the first place. A dog can’t change its habit of eating shit.”

“I knew nothing good would come of it.”

The students complained.

Perhaps suddenly coming to a warm place after intense activity, fatigue surged. One by one, they leaned against the wall, criticizing Wen Cheng Ye while involuntarily sliding down to sit on the floor.

Wang Fa chose an angle from which he could see the CT room and sat down as well.

The students spoke one after another, gradually talking more.

Lin Wan Xing just listened to them speak restlessly, saying many, many things.

“Teacher…”

Someone suddenly called out.

In conversations, there are often such situations where everyone falls silent, the atmosphere pauses, and the next question will take an abrupt turn.

“Yes?” Lin Wan Xing responded.

“What should we do now?”

The low, hoarse voice didn’t come from any of the more active players. Lin Wan Xing looked over to see the usually silent student Zhi Hui hugging his knees and tilting his head to look at her.

After thinking for a moment, Lin Wan Xing said, “Are you asking ‘what should you all do now,’ or ‘what should you all do with Wen Cheng Ye now’?”

“I don’t want to play soccer with him anymore,” Zhi Hui said with certainty.

People who speak less are often like this—able to precisely give the conclusion.

“Are you that certain? Why?”

“Because he’s not a good person,” Zhi Hui said.

Hearing this answer, Lin Wan Xing fell silent.

Of course, she could continue the conversation with Zhi Hui, such as discussing how to define a person’s “good” or “bad.”

But everyone has their scale in their heart.

Wen Cheng Ye, in Zhi Hui’s mind, clearly failed to measure up.

“‘Not a good person’ is a serious evaluation,” Lin Wan Xing finally said.

“If he were a good person, he would feel ‘sorry’ for doing bad things, but he doesn’t. He didn’t before, and he doesn’t know,” Zhi Hui said.

“Previous incidents?” Inadvertently, Lin Wan Xing looked at Fu Xin Shu’s foot resting on the wheelchair footplate. “Teacher Qian said you didn’t participate in the last Youth Super League, and the team disbanded right after.”

“That’s the incident,” Qin Ao said.

“Why?”

“Because Fu Xin Shu’s foot was broken,” Qin Ao’s voice was calm, yet carried a coldness that seemed to come through clenched teeth.

Lin Wan Xing thought that the past incident might be similar to what happened on the field today. Perhaps it was a training accident, or even more extreme, Wen Cheng Ye beating Fu Xin Shu, causing his fracture, so everyone was reluctant to talk about it.

But the entire thing was colder than she could imagine, so cold that Wen Cheng Ye himself seemed like an outsider in this brief story. Mentioning it made one feel strangely empty and cold.

The story took place last year.

Fu Xin Shu came from a poor family and often worked odd jobs. Once, there was an incident at the bar where he worked. He was wrongly accused by the manager of stealing a customer’s phone. The phone supposedly contained many important files. The other party was a thug who harassed him many times and eventually came looking near the school.

The other party was numerous, though they weren’t certain they could find Fu Xin Shu. They just randomly approached a student near the soccer field to ask.

Coincidentally, the person they found was Wen Cheng Ye.

For Wen Cheng Ye, he didn’t care how threatening these people looked, nor did he want to know what kind of trouble Fu Xin Shu had gotten into. Although he could have easily said “I don’t know,” helping Fu Xin Shu escape a calamity, he casually pointed in a direction.

“And then these people found Old Fu,” Qin Ao said.

In the hospital corridor, Fu Xin Shu had a Hong Jing Eighth Middle School uniform on his knees. His foot on the wheelchair footplate moved slightly.

Outside, the sky had darkened further, rain falling torrentially.

Later, Fu Xin Shu didn’t attend training that day.

When they saw Fu Xin Shu again, he was in the hospital with a broken foot, half-dead. Lin Wan Xing sat cross-legged, feeling a numbing pain in her ankle.

She understood clearly that in this story, Wen Cheng Ye wasn’t the one who was personally harmed, so he couldn’t truly be considered a villain.

But she also understood why the students felt angry about it.

Because in Wen Cheng Ye’s moral concepts, there was no compassion or remorse—things that belong to the category of “kind humanity.” He simply couldn’t be bothered to care who these people were or what they wanted with Fu Xin Shu. He equally didn’t care about anyone.

His blood was always cold.

The CT room’s sliding door closed, and the indicator light turned on. After the current patient came out, the next would be Fu Xin Shu.

“Actually, it’s all in the past,” Fu Xin Shu took a deep breath and said.

Lin Wan Xing thought for a while, realizing there was little she could do. She could only continue to address the question Zhi Hui had raised earlier.

So she asked, “So now, none of you want to play with Wen Cheng Ye anymore?”

One by one.

Her gaze moved from beginning to end, questioning each student in the corridor.

Shaking heads, more shaking heads.

“I don’t want to either.”

“Same here.”

Everyone followed with their stance.

Finally, she looked at Fu Xin Shu sitting in a wheelchair.

“I don’t want to anymore either,” Fu Xin Shu said with certainty.

His lips were chapped, his face still bearing marks of injury. Though appearing frail, he was unusually resolute as he said, “Teacher, I don’t care if he’s a good person or not, but I know he doesn’t want to win. I don’t want to play with someone who doesn’t want to win.”