"Who the fuck are you?"
Jiang Zhaoye was taken aback by the question. "...Jiang Zhaoye."
"I know you're Jiang Zhaoye!" Sun Mingming's voice practically cracked. "I'm asking how the hell you turned out like this?!"
It was already just over twenty minutes away from nine in the morning, peak time in front of the classroom building. Students passing by couldn't help but glance over when they heard the commotion.
They were all ninth-graders from the same school year, with plenty of familiar faces among them. Hearing the commotion, more and more people gathered around.
Among the onlookers, there happened to be a girl from their class whose seat used to be diagonally across from Jiang Zhaoye's. She walked around him once, then circled back to inspect him again, muttering under her breath as she walked, "Holy shit..."
A boy from their class who had just joined the crowd to watch the fun pushed his way in, originally wanting to see what was going on, only to end up seeing Jiang Zhaoye.
He froze, sizing him up from top to bottom for a long moment, before uncertainly backing off to stand beside Chen Tuizhi, who was quietly enjoying the show, and slinging an arm over his shoulder. "Is this Old Jiang?"
Chen Tuizhi shrugged with arms crossed, shaking the arm off his shoulder, and raised an eyebrow. "Mm-hmm~"
"Whoa... What on earth did he do over the summer break?"
"I didn't do anything..." With them whispering right beside him like this, Jiang Zhaoye heard every word, feeling quite helpless.
"You didn't do anything to turn out like this?" Hearing that, Sun Mingming pointed a trembling finger at his face, laughing out of sheer absurdity. "You didn't look like this at all before! You used to look like..." He gestured with his hands for a long while without being able to describe it, before finally giving up. "Anyway, you didn't look like this!"
Jiang Zhaoye's Chinese grade was average at best, so he had no idea what to say at that moment and could only laugh awkwardly.
When he smiled, the noisy crowd around them suddenly fell silent again.
Two months ago, Jiang Zhaoye had been just an ordinary boy, so his smile had been ordinary too, carrying at most a bit of youthful shyness and vitality.
But as he smiled now, his eyebrows were like soaring clouds and sudden breezes, his eyes like the clear moon over a vast sea. That smile carried a cool, lingering warmth, as if early spring snow was melting, or like the first beam of sunlight piercing through the morning mist. Those ice-blue eyes lit up slightly, akin to ice cracking open to reveal a crystal-clear lake...
Sun Mingming stared in sheer awe.
Coming back to his senses after being stunned for several seconds, he shuddered. "Holy crap—stop smiling, I'm straight!"
His composure-shattering voice stood out sharply in the quiet atmosphere. The surrounding crowd froze for a second before bursting into laughter, causing people upstairs and downstairs to look over repeatedly.
During such peak traffic hours, it was pure clickbait in every sense of the word.
Some people had already taken photos of Jiang Zhaoye and sent them into class chats, school chats, and all sorts of classmate group chats.
Jiang Zhaoye noticed more and more people crowding around. Many were looking in his direction, some standing on tiptoe, others looking down from upstairs, far too many eyes falling upon him. Not used to this kind of attention, he frowned slightly, looked down at his watch, and said to the people around him, "It's almost nine o'clock. Let's go."
Chen Tuizhi snapped back to reality as well, immediately shaking the guys around him awake. "Let's go, let's go! Stop crowding! The teacher's coming!"
Seeing the slightly out-of-control situation around them, Sun Mingming and the others were quick-witted enough. They all began shouting to clear out the crowd, opening a path for Jiang Zhaoye first while winking at him, signaling for this light source to take off first.
Jiang Zhaoye readily complied, stepping forward toward the classroom building with light, swift strides.
The crowd finally dispersed, but the people passing by him all subconsciously looked back three times with every step.
Jiang Zhaoye was simply walking at a quick pace, yet sunlight insisted on dancing down through the gaps in the leaves, jumping across his shoulders and the tips of his hair. When the wind blew, the hem of his white shirt fluttered gently. He looked as if he were walking straight out of light, picture-perfect.
Sun Mingming and the others caught up, naturally spreading out around him to quietly shield him from the crowd, maintaining a subtle distance.
Whispers from girls drifted from behind. They politely kept their voices very low, but the wind insisted on delivering the words straight to the main character's ears: "Did our school ever have a guy this handsome before?"
Another voice replied in a low whisper, "I've never heard of one before either, but this level of good looks... you know what I mean, right?"
"I get it! Looking at him makes me afraid to even speak. So he shouldn't be? There's no way someone at this level wouldn't have made a stir at school."
Jiang Zhaoye kept walking without stopping, though the tips of his ears felt a little warm.
The Class 10, Grade 9 classroom was at the end of the hallway on the third floor.
By the time he walked in, more than half the class was already seated. It was loud and chaotic, with people chatting, messing around, or looking down scrolling through their phones, a complete mess.
But the moment Jiang Zhaoye appeared at the doorway, the people closest to the door silenced first. As he walked in, the classmates following behind him entered quietly as well, passing by him to head to their own seats.
A strange silence spread outward in ripples circle by circle, and the noise in the whole classroom dropped at a rate visible to the naked eye.
A student who hadn't realized what was going on subconsciously stashed their phone into their desk. "Is the homeroom teacher here?"
The rest of the class froze, then burst into giggles and laughter. Everyone relaxed, and after a moment, the room returned to its noisy hustle and bustle.
Jiang Zhaoye found his old spot by the window and sat down with a plop, touching his old friend of a desk with a trace of nostalgia, only to get a hand full of dust. Laughing softly in amusement, he pulled out a wet wipe from his spatial button and started wiping down his old friend.
Outside the window was the school sports field. Next to the building stood several old locust trees, their branches stretching out to the windowsill, their leaves a bright, vivid green.
Halfway through wiping the desk, the chair beside him was pulled out. Lin Shutong, wearing loose, dark denim pants, kicked the desk leg. Sitting in front, Chen Tuizhi consciously shifted his butt, moving his backrest forward against the seat behind him.
As he shifted, he greeted her with smooth flattery, "Yo~ Class Rep! Haven't seen you in so long, you've gotten even more fashion-forward~"
Lin Shutong rolled her eyes at him and sat down with a plop.
On her upper body, she wore a stylishly designed tight-fitting black-and-white color-blocked tank top, exposing her athletic, smooth-lined honey-toned arms. On her wrist was a silver-and-black watch, and in her hand she held a cup of sloshing soy milk. Sizing up Jiang Zhaoye from top to bottom, a playful smile appeared on her handsome face. "Yo, you're here."
"Yeah."
Lin Shutong pulled out a straw, stabbed it into the soy milk with a snap, took a sip, and asked mumblingly, "Was that you being gawked at downstairs just now?"
"...Yeah."
"Get used to it," Lin Shutong patted his shoulder, her tone carrying a hint of gloating. "Let me tell you, this is nothing. Once high school starts, the entire grade will know about you."
Jiang Zhaoye sighed and didn't respond.
The people in the classroom were still sneaking glances at him.
Jiang Zhaoye felt those eyes, but he didn't look back.
After wiping the desk, he looked out at the old locust trees outside the window. Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves into the worn window. As the wind blew, the leaves rustled softly, casting a flickering patch of light onto his desk, which still bore damp wipe marks.
Lin Shutong raised an eyebrow and toyed with the braid at her chest with one hand... She had cut her hair short, but kept the ends long, braiding them into several small cornrows. Two of them fell across her chest along her shoulders, and the ends were studded with silver ornaments. Under the sunlight outside the window, the subtle texture of a psionic circuit pattern shimmered faintly on them, suggesting they were no simple decoration either.
Rate on N.U.
