At that moment, Sheng Yan’s trust in the “Wish-Granting App” had soared from thirty percent to sixty percent.
It wasn’t a full hundred because, back before the two of them fell out, Qin Zigui usually let Sheng Yan have his way anyway.
So it might not be the app’s doing after all.
Maybe it was just because it was Sheng Yan’s birthday, and Qin Zigui barely still had a conscience, so he chickened out.
Whatever the case was, he’d just have to wait until tomorrow to find out.
Still, Sheng Yan had always been someone easy to please and even easier to coax his moods turned fast, bad to good in a flash, and a tiny bit of sweetness could make him perfectly content.
So, riding the joy of a “temporary victory” in his ongoing war with Qin Zigui, all his doubts about the app were washed away.
After making Qin Zigui say “gege” three more times with great satisfaction, he completely ignored the other’s icy, lifeless stare and swaggered off in his slippers to wash up and get dressed.
There were three bathrooms in the house: one next to the living room for guests and the housekeeper—no shower, no personal items and two full ones with bathtubs, one in the master bedroom upstairs and one in Qin Zigui’s room.
Naturally, Sheng Yan wasn’t about to use Uncle and Aunt Qin’s bathroom upstairs, so he could only use Qin Zigui’s.
To be fair, Qin Zigui’s bathroom was quite spacious. Their toothbrushes, towels, combs, and toothpaste were perfectly separated on opposite sides of the counter, lined up in clear boundaries each in their own territory.
Hard to say which one was disgusted by the other.
Sheng Yan muttered under his breath, grabbed the toothpaste, and was just about to squeeze when he suddenly felt like there was something unresolved, not something that happened after he got drunk, but before.
Something to do with Qin Zigui.
And something that had made him really angry.
But what was it exactly?
After thinking for a while with no answer, Sheng Yan decided not to bother.
Anyway, there was now a sixty-percent chance he really had a wish-granting system. Whatever he wanted Qin Zigui to do, he’d just make it happen one or two little issues were no big deal.
Thinking that, he squeezed out a thick line of toothpaste.
He felt he’d earned the right to be a little extravagant.
Lunch, in front of Aunt Qin, went peacefully enough.
But once they left the house, Sheng Yan dropped the act—he lifted his backpack by the strap and held it up to Qin Zigui.
“Heavy.”
Qin Zigui took it, slinging it over one shoulder.
In the elevator, Sheng Yan lifted his chin.
Qin Zigui pressed the button for the first floor.
At the school gate, Sheng Yan stood with his hands in his pockets, not moving an inch.
Qin Zigui bent down to sign them in, backpack still over one shoulder.
When they reached the back door of Class 2–6, Sheng Yan flopped into his seat like a boss.
Qin Zigui set his bag down neatly, pulled out a bottle of cold soda, and placed it beside him.
“Anything else?”
“Nope.” Sheng Yan leaned lazily back in his chair, raising his right hand in a half-hearted wave.
“Go do your thing.”
The posture was absolutely arrogant.
But Qin Zigui only replied with a quiet “Mm,” turned, and walked toward Class 1 like there was nothing strange about Sheng Yan’s attitude at all.
The classmates of Class 6, who usually wouldn’t dare step within a meter of the famously cold and untouchable Qin Zigui, all stared and slowly formed a giant question mark.
“?”
What was going on?
Since when was Qin Zigui this approachable, mild-tempered, and friendly?
“Yan-ge, did you get some dirt on him or something?”
Gou You guessed carefully, his analytical mind at work.
Sheng Yan leaned back, twisting open his soda.
“No dirt. Just… normal.”
Remembering how Sheng Yan had nearly grabbed a knife in fury the night before, Gou You: “…”
Maybe he had a very different definition of “normal.”
Of course, he didn’t dare say that out loud. Instead, he asked tentatively,
“Maybe… did something special happen between you two last night?”
Like maybe the fierce delinquent finally lost patience with the uptight, holier-than-thou top student, pinned him against a wall, and beat him into submission until the good boy’s eyes turned red and he gasped, ‘Fine, you can have my life.’
After all, though everyone feared Qin Zigui’s aura, no one had ever actually seen him lose his temper, fight, or even break a single school rule.
He was the model student—excellent, disciplined, calm, untouchable.
Next to him, the scarred, fight-prone, class-skipping Sheng Yan looked like a warlord straight out of chaos.
So the more Gou You thought about it, the more he was convinced that the only way Sheng Yan could have “tamed” Qin Zigui… was through violence.
But Sheng Yan thought of something else entirely. He tapped the soda bottle with his fingertip and didn’t deny it.
“Yeah. Something special did happen.”
For example—the wish-granting app.
But he couldn’t mention that yet, or he’d sound like a lunatic.
Gou You, however, thought he’d guessed right and slapped the desk.
“I knew it!”
Then he leaned in, lowering his voice.
“But, Yan-ge, take it easy. Qin Zigui’s not like those street punks, he’s a straight-A student. If you beat him half to death, Aunt Huang would skin you alive!
Anyway… did you ask him yet?”
Sheng Yan took a swig of cold soda.
“Ask what?”
“How did Qin Zigui even know you were sneaking out last night? And why did he use a fake patrol pass to trick you? What was he after?”
At that, Sheng Yan’s hand froze around the soda bottle.
No wonder he’d felt like he’d forgotten something.
So that was it.
The moment Gou You brought it up, Sheng Yan remembered the smug look on Qin Zigui’s face when he’d lied to him last night. His temper instantly flared. With a cold expression, he slammed the bottle down on the desk.
“I’ll ask him after school.”
No way he was letting this slide.
He dared to lie to him?
He was dead.
So, as soon as classes ended that afternoon, Sheng Yan slung on his bag and marched straight toward Class 1 with murder in his eyes.
Zhu Peng and Gou You followed right behind, eager to watch the show.
At the back door, they ran into Lin Qian. Sheng Yan glanced into the classroom.
“Where’s Qin Zigui?”
Lin Qian was packing her bag.
“He left early. Why, you need him for something?”
Left again?
Was the guy scared of him?
Sheng Yan’s excitement deflated instantly. He was about to leave, but then something came to mind. He turned back to Lin Qian.
“You’re heading to the back street to eat, right?”
Lin Qian zipped her bag.
“Uh-huh.”
“Then come with us.”
“?” Lin Qian raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly realized you’re in love with me?”
Sheng Yan: “…”
What kind of logic was that?
To avoid misunderstanding, Sheng Yan explained coolly,
“Ran-ge said the kids from the vocational school are planning to jump you tonight. Come with us—less trouble that way.”
Of course, by “less trouble,” he meant easier for me to handle them.
He’d expected Lin Qian to at least look worried or scared. Zhu Peng and Gou You were ready to console her but Lin Qian only gave a cold snort.
“Those bastards think I’m afraid? Come on, let’s go ambush them! If I don’t show them what ‘lust leads to the knife’ really means, they’ll never learn how to spell ‘grandma.’”
Then she slung her bag over her shoulder, strutting off toward the back street beside Sheng Yan each of them more swaggering than the other followed by their two loyal sidekicks.
The back street was an old, half-demolished road lying between the experimental high school and the vocational school. A few turns ahead was another low-ranked city school, Nanwu No. 3 High.
One old street, three schools lined with shady internet cafés, food stalls, and narrow abandoned alleys stuffed with junk. No security, no cameras. Practically a paradise for fights and secret meetups.
To get from the vocational school to the experimental high school, you had to pass one of those narrow alley mouths. In front of it was a mute woman’s food cart, selling the best Chongqing noodles and spicy potato skewers on the whole street or so people said.
They sat down by her stall with dark expressions, each grabbing a bowl of extra-spicy noodles and crouching to wait.
Sheng Yan, raised with all the habits of a pampered young master, wasn’t fussy about street food, but he still kept his posture sitting lazily in a chair, legs stretched out, eating with unhurried elegance.
Zhu Peng and Gou You, first-timers to a street fight, squatted on the steps with bowls in hand, legs spread wide, trying to look like hardened gangsters. Their legs bounced, noodles slurped, hoping their “experienced” image would intimidate someone.
Lin Qian found the effect amusing and copied them perfectly, squatting beside them in her school uniform, looking just as ridiculous.
The three of them lined up neatly in their Experimental High uniforms, squatting in a row.
After countless passersby gave them strange looks, Sheng Yan coolly dragged his table and chair back a meter, trying to disassociate himself.
Zhu Peng protested in agony.
“Yan-ge! How can you look down on us? We’re your backup, you know!”
His legs were already trembling from squatting too long, but he refused to give up the pose.
“So when are they coming, anyway? We’ve been here half an hour my legs are numb.”
Lin Qian, also tired, knocked her knees and complained.
“Yeah, Sheng Yan, you didn’t make this up just to get me to eat with you, did you? Let me say this now I’m totally over you. It’s too late to regret it. We can only have a pure inviter-and-guest relationship from now on.”
“Right, Yan-ge,” Gou You chimed in, legs shaking but still gossiping,
“Even if a prodigal son returns, a good horse doesn’t eat—”
Before he could finish “back grass,” Sheng Yan shot him a cold glare.
Gou You instantly shut up.
Sheng Yan didn’t respond, only frowned slightly.
Ran-ge was always reliable. If plans changed, he’d have given a heads-up. And those lowlife vocational kids weren’t the type to suddenly back out.
Dinner hour was almost over why hadn’t they shown up?
Something felt off.
Deep down, he sensed that something connected, but he couldn’t quite find the thread.
Just as he was trying to think it through, he caught sight of a shadow flickering past the end of the alley. His eyes narrowed. He stood, slapped money onto the table.
“You guys finish up and head back to school. I’ve got something to do.”
Gou You reacted first.
“What? Enemy spotted?”
“Yeah. A very slippery one. But I can handle it. Stay out of this.”
He grabbed his backpack and strode off.
But his movement was too abrupt, the backpack knocked the corner of the table with a dull thud.
Gou You instinctively reached out to steady it, then froze. “Holy shit! Yan-ge, what did you pack? Some kind of heavy weapon? Why is it so damn heavy?”
He was about to unzip it to take a look.
Sheng Yan snatched the bag back like he was afraid someone might see what was inside, and snapped coldly, “Is it your bag? Don’t go rifling through it.”
“Come on, Yan-ge, fighting’s one thing, but whatever that lead-weight thing is in your bag, it could kill someone. And evening study’s about to start, what if Qin Zigui catches you?” Gou You sounded actually worried.
Lin Qian, who loved a spectacle, sucked on her soda and drawled, “Relax, Qin Zigui isn’t in evening study tonight.”
Sheng Yan looked at her. “Did Huang Shulang give him another fake sick note?”
“Uh, no.” Lin Qian explained, “Huang said to let him leave campus freely so he can focus on preparing for the informatics contest so missing class won’t matter.”
“???”
Sheng Yan was totally baffled.
Every time he tried to get Huang Shuliang to write a sick note for him, it was like pulling teeth; it would take days and days before Huang would relent, that’s why he’d learned how to scale walls so well.
So why could Qin Zigui skip class without any note?
Before he could finish that thought, Zhu Peng, mouth still full of noodles, jabbed a chopstick at him and mumbled, “You’re different. If Qin Zigui skips class, it’s because the class is beneath him, he’d go study on his own. He wouldn’t go do anything illegal or sketchy.”
Sheng Yan: “Yeah, right.”
Lin Qian, bottle in hand, nodded. “At least you look like you would.”
Sheng Yan: “???”
“Here’s the difference,” Lin Qian — the literature rep helpfully explained for him. “You two are both handsome, but one looks like a decadent playboy, the other looks like a calm, austere model student. If one day you both showed up at a nightclub with a fifty-thousand minimum, Sheng Yan, you’d be the spender and Qin Zigui would be the cop busting the gambling. Got it?”
Got it.
Bullshit.
Where did that stereotype even come from?
Why can’t Qin Zigui be the type sent to work as a host at a nightclub?
Sheng Yan felt like he was about to explode from these people.
What irritated him most was that he couldn’t really argue, Qin Zigui truly had never done anything out of line; he was practically the embodiment of a model student.
Boring, rigid, and utterly lacking in warmth putting himself next to Qin Zigui made Sheng Yan feel embarrassed.
He flung the backpack over his shoulder with a huff. “I know what I’m doing. Don’t follow me.”
Then he strode to the brick wall at the end of the alley, jumped up, grabbed the top, pushed, flipped, and disappeared over the edge before their eyes.
Lin Qian: “……”
Gou You: “……”
Zhu Peng: “……”
With skills like that, they simply couldn’t keep up.
They sighed. “Hope Qin Zigui’s straight-laced good-student vibe rubs off on Yan-ge otherwise what if he actually goes down a criminal path?”
Meanwhile, Sheng Yan now clambering along the route his target had taken, he moved carefully worried the opponent might have fled but also ready for a surprise attack.
He finally reached the other end of the alley, looked around left and right, and when he was sure no one was there, he tossed his bag down, squatted, unzipped it, and solemnly pulled out a gleaming, heavy object.
A can of cat food.
A few months ago, while he was out surfing the web, a coy orange cat had conned him, pretty fur but skinny as hell. Out of pity he’d fed it for a while, and then the cat disappeared. He’d carried a can of cat food around for a week looking for it, and had just caught sight of that ungrateful little fugitive a moment ago.
The cat looked even skinnier now; he had to catch it before it got away so Sheng Yan had no time to bother with those punks and only cared about getting the cat back.
But he couldn’t tell anyone. Imagine the shame if it leaked out that the fearsome campus bully who scales walls and skips class was doing it all for a cat.
Thinking that, he popped open the can and tapped the rim twice — their secret signal — and called, “Miaomiao.”
No response.
He called again, “Miaomiao.” Still nothing.
Again: “Miaomiao.” Silence.
“Miaomiao” was the name he’d given the orange cat — it never failed before. Today it wouldn’t answer.
Did the little fugitive run off again?
He crouched and started searching through the junk piles in the alley, calling softly, “Miaomiao, Miaomiao…”
To avoid scaring the pampered little escapee, the tough-guy voice turned gentle, the last syllable lingering with a spoiled-boy coo. If another person had heard him, Sheng Yan thought, he might have to kill them to defend his hard-man dignity.
Rounding the corner, he called again, “Mia…”
And then he froze.
Because in his line of sight suddenly appeared a familiar pair of white sneakers, a crisp school trouser leg with not a crease out of place, and a casually hanging, astonishingly handsome hand.
His hand was beautiful — pale, slender, and well-proportioned, with a cool, bony elegance. The nails were neatly trimmed and spotless as always, but near the base of his fingers was a fresh scratch beside an older scab, still oozing a trace of blood like he’d just been in a fight.
A little farther, at the same level as Sheng Yan’s line of sight, several blond-haired delinquents were crouched against the wall, clutching their heads and trembling, faces twisted in misery. They looked… oddly familiar.
The amount of information was a bit overwhelming.
Sheng Yan froze, staring blankly upward just in time to meet Qin Zigui’s cool, lowered gaze. His eyelids fluttered once, and then, before he could stop himself, the sound stuck halfway in his throat slipped out:
“…Meow?”
The ending rose slightly dazed, soft, almost coquettish.
Qin Zigui’s fingertips twitched, as if that one word had burned him.
Author’s note:
Qin Zigui: Don’t ask. Let’s just say rock hard.
(As mentioned in “Don’t Pretend to Be Poor,” Sheng Yan and Qin Zigui’s schools — Shi Wai and Nanwu No. 3 are very close. Qin and Sheng are one year older than Xia and Song.)
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Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152