Chapter 43 Gossip

Grade 1, Class A.

The classroom was unusually quiet today. That was Liu Guangze's impression as he walked into the classroom with his backpack on.

What made him even more uneasy was that his classmates were all looking at him in unison. Once the class's most inconspicuous invisible person, he felt as though he had overnight been thrust into the role of the protagonist.

However, he soon understood what had happened.

The two bouts of bad luck he had encountered that day had both been posted on the forum, accompanied by an imaginative and provocative title. One picture showed Bai Youqing standing up for him right in the classroom, while the other was a snapshot of her extending a helping hand to him in the night sky.

The composition of the shots was sheer perfection, even though he had not even dared to touch the other person.

He had secretly wondered whether he had somehow obtained the script of Arita Haruyuki, the protagonist of Accel World, but he only ever dared to think about it in his heart.

Although Bai Youqing's figure might look a bit slender and undernourished, she was nonetheless a famously beautiful girl in the class, always eager to help others with excellent academic grades, making her the object of many boys' secret infatuations.

Yet none of them could fathom why Bai Youqing would repeatedly help a chubby loser.

Her actions in the classroom could still be explained away as an aversion to Ye Qing's bullying of a classmate; but why would there still be interactions between them outside the school gates? Surely the two of them belonged to completely different worlds!

The moment people saw the headline, their first thought was that this was just another piece of fake news concocted by someone looking for attention.

Yet upon clicking in to read, they suddenly realized that this scenario might not be entirely impossible.

Liu Guangze, damn you to hell!

With complex gazes, the crowd shifted their focus to Liu Guangze's deskmate, Liu Mengcheng, eagerly anticipating that he might ferret out the backstory.

"Is what's on this post true? You're quite something, buddy," Liu Mengcheng whispered. Although Liu Guangze was a bit heavy, he was a decent guy, and their relationship was passable.

"I don't even know why."

"Well, you're in for a rough time."

Quite a few people in the class had a crush on the class monitor. Now that such a scandal had broken out, Liu Mengcheng sighed and distanced himself slightly from the boy. He could keenly sense that a rather unpleasant atmosphere was beginning to take shape in the class.

If it were just Ye Qing targeting him originally, that would be one thing, but now, it was fair to say he had made an enemy of the vast majority of the class.

"Where's your homework?"

Tang Yu, serving as the mathematics class representative, was the first to approach him. Glancing sideways at Liu Guangze, his gaze was ice-cold.

Liu Guangze silently handed over his homework, having long since mentally prepared himself for Tang Yu's attitude.

Tang Yu took the homework and tossed it away casually. Liu Guangze's exercise book flew across his desk and slammed onto the floor.

Tang Yu stepped forward to pick it up, then deliberately planted a shoe print right on the cover.

"Sorry, my hand slipped," Tang Yu said, flashing a smile at Liu Guangze.

A flash of anger stirred within Liu Guangze, but he lowered his head slightly and pretended not to see it.

The onlookers' gazes grew even more complicated. There were those who sympathized, but the majority wore the detached, spectator-like expressions of people watching a good show.

Tring-ling-ling~

Bai Youqing walked in carrying a stack of practice workbooks. Finding the atmosphere in the classroom somewhat bizarre, she didn't dwell on it and simply returned to her seat.

Ye Qing sat in the leftmost seat by the window, gazing out at the blue sky and white clouds beyond the classroom window while the teacher's tireless lectures droned in his ears.

"Sigh, what a shame. Bai Youqing wasn't over here just now, so she missed this good show."

Inevitably, his gaze drifted toward Liu Guangze, that chubby little fellow.

His black hair covered his eyes. Although he was feigning diligence by staring down at his textbook, the pen gripped tightly in his hand betrayed the inner turmoil raging within him.

"Still making no progress at all. How boring."

With that, his gaze shifted back to Bai Youqing. Her hair was tied in a single ponytail, and her eyes flickered constantly between the blackboard and the textbook. The gel pen in her hand never stopped moving, and the sunlight streaming onto her clothes seemed to cast a thin layer of golden radiance over her.

Yet a girl with such classical scholarly elegance was actually capable of taking on five people at once—that was something he truly had not anticipated.

His original intention had simply been to go fishing, with Liu Guangze serving as the bait, hoping perhaps to trigger a scenario where a magical girl swooped in to save the day.

Every school surely hid a magical girl; it was impossible for the finest high school in Yeqiu City to lack one.

To his surprise, Bai Youqing had emerged and pulled off a divine descent, single-handedly taking on five opponents.

It had certainly opened his eyes.

Tring-ling-ling~

The end-of-class bell rang. Wan Jie, with his jet-black hair, walked over to Ye Qing and asked with an eager expression, "Boss, do you need me to go buy you some snacks?"

Nobody is born liking to act as a lackey, but Ye Qing really was a great boss to have around.

If you bought a hundred yuan worth of items, he would hand you five hundred.

Ye Qing stood up, looked over Wan Jie—who had dyed his hair back to black—studied him closely for a moment, and nodded with satisfaction.

"Looking at you this way is indeed much more pleasing to the eye. Whenever you trailed behind me before, I always felt like I wasn't a very good person; that feeling is much less prominent now."

"Uh..."

Ye Qing rotated his neck and made a lavish, expansive wave of his hand. "Let's go. Pick whatever snacks you want in the tuck shop, my treat."

"Oh, right, Boss, where is Gao Wen? How come I haven't seen him at all today?"

Wan Jie scanned the classmates with a hint of confusion. In the past, that tall guy would have come over to wait by Ye Qing's side the moment class ended.

Compared to himself, Gao Wen's purpose in following Ye Qing was far simpler: Ye Qing could keep him well-fed.

"I sent him away for advanced training. You'll see him again in a few days."

Ye Qing turned his head and smiled at the corners of his mouth.

Upon hearing this, Wan Jie immediately shut his mouth, suddenly remembering that behind this person lay not just wealth and power, but access to an extraordinary world completely beyond the reach of ordinary people.

And wasn't that precisely why he had been willing to follow him in the first place?

Ye Qing was quite satisfied with Wan Jie's attitude—cautious, somewhat clever, making for a thoroughly qualified lackey.

"By the way, I recall your relatives seemed to have some project collaboration with Liu Guangze's family, didn't they?"

"Huh? Oh, um, yes. I heard my second uncle mention it once when he was drinking, but later on, their company's material review apparently failed to pass, and the project fizzled out into nothing."

Wan Jie wore a rather dazed expression. He was just a high school freshman; if you asked him to contact punks or scout out school gossip and rumors, he could find ways to get it done.

However, the topics Ye Qing brought up were entirely outside his sphere of knowledge, leaving him with no idea how to respond.

"Forget it, forget it. How dull. Let's go buy some snacks."

Seeing Wan Jie's blank expression, Ye Qing looked thoroughly disappointed.

Before coming here, he had heard that Yeqiu City's No. 1 High School had absorbed the majority of educational resources from the coastal cities. He hadn't come here merely to study, but rather to build connections and expand his circle of acquaintances.

Judging by the current state of things, building connections was a joke. The only person in the class with any hint of power was Gu Xiaorou, whose personality was soft and mushy, making her completely uninteresting.

On the way back to the classroom, Ye Qing's eyes roamed over the female students across the campus as he asked, "How did that rumor I told you to spread turn out?"

"It's started to ferment on the school forum, but the effect hasn't been very good. The political education office suppressed it."

"Of course the effect wouldn't be good. Did you honestly think a toad could eat swan meat?"

"Boss, why are you going to such great lengths to mess with that chubby kid? I still don't see anything special about him."

"Don't ask about things you shouldn't know."

"Understood."

Ye Qing returned to the classroom.

He could see Liu Guangze still sitting in that corner—the very spot that, in Japanese manga, only the protagonist was permitted to occupy.

Wan Jie's doubts were his own doubts as well.

He had been observing the fellow for nearly half a semester, yet he stubbornly failed to discover anything extraordinary about him, nor could he understand why Lord Viper insisted on making him relentlessly target this brooding, introverted chubby boy.

After all, not everyone who sat in the protagonist's seat actually got to be the protagonist.

Senior High Teachers' Office

Having finished his class, Bai Yuze was in a rather good mood. He returned to the office holding two bottles of pristine Yili yogurt.

He placed one box on his own desk and the other on the desk of Teacher Hoshino, who was hard at work grading test papers.

He had roughly glanced through the materials his sister had gathered; Teacher Hoshino seemed particularly fond of Yili yogurt.

"Thank you, Senior Shiro."

Teacher Hoshino raised her head, glanced at Bai Yuze, and offered her thanks before immediately plunging back into the arduous task of grading papers.

With a female colleague who was so earnest and diligent, the pressure on Bai Yuze's shoulders was truly no joke.

Even slacking off left him with a guilty conscience.

He pulled open his drawer and deposited the student files inside.

During today's substitute teaching, he had roughly observed his soon-to-be-inherited class. There didn't appear to be any particularly unruly troublemakers among them.

He had even bumped into Xia Qing and Han Xue, whom he had crossed paths with once before. The former had thoroughly taken advantage of him during the comic convention, and if he ever caught a chance, he would definitely exact heavy revenge.

Decidedly, from now on, whenever he popped texts for random recitation checks, he would pick her every single time.

The only student who warranted special attention was Fei Yue, whose train of thought he simply could not fathom.

A wealthy heiress playing the role of an impoverished maiden falling from grace in the red-light district;

She had even committed the sins of pride, greed, gluttony, and sloth right in front of him—truly lawless and heinous crimes.

Just as he settled back into his seat, however, Bai Yuze heard a piece of bad news.

"Have you heard? It seems Bai Youqing and Liu Guangze from Grade 1, Class A might have romantic intentions."

"Huh?"

Bai Yuze abruptly turned his head, his gaze locking fiercely onto his chattering female colleague, Teacher Zhang. "Teacher Yuhuan, what did you just say?"

"Uh... well..."

Teacher Zhang Yuhuan was startled by Bai Yuze's sudden query, especially upon meeting his piercing gaze. Nobody would have expected that the usually warm Teacher Bai possessed such a frightening side.

"Um... yesterday, a rather trending post appeared on the school forum titled 'Does the Swan Fancy the Toad?'. It talked about how Class A's Bai Youqing helped Liu Guangze twice, and there were even photos attached! But the school administrators deleted it early this morning, and the user who posted it got permanently banned."

Only then did Teacher Zhang Yuhuan cautiously take a sip of her herbal tea and offer her opinion.

"If you ask me, these students simply have too little homework and too much leisure time for gossip."

"Precisely. High school is for studying, and romance is the sworn enemy of academic performance. I've taught several batches now, and quite a few promising seedlings ruined their grades just because of puppy love. Sigh..."

A middle-aged teacher holding a thermal flask raised his head and chimed in with a look of displeasure.

"Teacher Bai, you seem to have a younger sister named Bai Youqing, don't you?"

Before Bai Yuze could respond, Teacher Hoshino Seli, hunched over her desk, lifted her head with a look of astonishment.

"......"

".......Hah."

After a brief silence, the middle-aged teacher offered some earnest and well-meaning advice: "Teacher Bai, students at that age don't understand romance. You should go home and counsel her properly—she needs to keep her mind on her studies, otherwise it'll be too late if something actually happens."

"Mm."

Bai Yuze massaged his temples in mild distress. He wasn't the least bit worried about Bai Youqing getting into early romance; just a few days ago, his own sister had still been helping him gather information on Teacher Hoshino!

"Teacher Bai, if you ever need adolescent psychological counseling, you can come to me," Teacher Hoshino looked at him and said softly.

With that, she lowered her head again to resume grading papers, only to raise it again a moment later, adding very considerately, "Adult psychological issues can be consulted with me as well."

Bai Yuze: "......"

"Will do. Thanks in advance, Teacher Hoshino."

"You're welcome."

One had to admit, Teacher Hoshino Seli was truly thoughtful.

"Say, Teacher Bai and Teacher Hoshino, you two are a talented man and a gorgeous woman—have you ever considered taking things further?"

Teacher Zhang teased them with a knowing look. Compared to student gossip, she much preferred gossip among the teachers.

"Teacher Zhang's words aren't unreasonable. Speaking from experience, Teacher Hoshino is young, beautiful, gentle, and considerate. If I were ten years younger and in my prime, there wouldn't even be room for you, Teacher Bai."

The middle-aged male teacher quietly set down his thermal flask and let out a sigh of nostalgia.

"Oh, Teacher Ding, have some shame. Even if you were twenty years younger, I doubt you'd manage to win her over," Teacher Zhang retorted with her characteristic sharpness.

Instantly, the office erupted in laughter. The atmosphere among the colleagues in the senior high department was quite friendly, allowing for the occasional lighthearted joke.

Bai Yuze smiled as well, not taking his colleagues' remarks to heart.

Teacher Hoshino, meanwhile, had buried her head back in her work, though the faint flush at the tips of her ears suggested her inner world was far from calm.