By The Time The Overseer Finally Nodded, He
Was So Drowsy That He Couldn't Even Find His
Own Bedroom Door.
At the front of the classroom, Song Sirui said something
terrible that must have gotten on the nerves of a huge group of
people, Gao Tianyang took the lead by pressing him onto the
table, putting him in a stranglehold as well as clawing at his waist.
One person after another all piled on top of Song Sirui's back,
nearly suffocating him.
Li Yu couldn't understand braindead games like these, as she
did her work she shook her head and giggled uncontrollably. Little
Chilli was cheering on at the side, she even dug out her phone and
recorded the entire process as though she was filming a movie.
She even tried different angles and zoom-ins in imitation.
Song Sirui was squeezed until his face and neck were
flushed, and spat in difficulty, "I'm fucking sorry, please?!"
"I'm gonna die, help me——"
"What's wrong with all of you!"
...
The classroom was full of chaos, but Sheng Wang heard
Jiang Tian's words crystal clear.
He mused and said, "I have a pretty bad temper and a petty
mind, I stay angry for a long time too."
Jiang Tian's upper body was slightly leaning forward, a pen
between his fingers. When he listened to him, his gaze was
slightly lowered, his fingers pinched the two ends of his black pen,
slowly spinning it around.
He nodded, and replied, "Mn, so?"
So if I reopen just because you told me to, wouldn't I look
pathetic?
The leg stepping on the horizontal bar under the table
relaxed, the chair rocking backwards settled back onto the
ground, the back of the chair no longer touching the edges of
Jiang Tian's table.
He tossed the totally useless physics book back into the
desk. Just as he was about to make some bold declarations, Gao
Tianyang who was at the front returned in victory, asking him
from afar, "Sheng-ge! What got you so happy?"
Sheng Wang: "Happy? Your ass."
Gao Tianyang: "???"
He did not understand how did a "happy?" from him became
all about his ass, he could only see Jiang Tian shaking in laughter
laughter.
Young Master Sheng Wang's dignity was priceless, even if he
was to lose it it wouldn't be now. Therefore, he forced himself to
not give in for an entire afternoon as well as three periods of night
self-study, and somehow endured all the way until it was the
middle of the night.
He was in the midst of calculating for the final physics
question when his phone vibrated three times at his side, there
were a few WeChat messages.
Normally, Jiang Tian would be the only one still up at this
hour. Sheng Wang subconsciously peered at the wall behind him,
and opened up WeChat. Unexpectedly, the conversation most on
top wasn't the person next door, it was his ex-deskmate slash
roommate, Pang Xie.
StarAniseCrab: I JUST SAW YOU ON THE INTERNET SHENGGE!!!
StarAniseCrab: as expected, if you're handsome there will
always be people taking pictures of you no matter where you go
StarAniseCrab: it's only been like 5 seconds, there's already
people lining up wanting to confess to you
Sheng Wang was thoroughly lost, he jabbed three
punctuation marks in reply.
Shop's Closed: ???
StarAniseCrab: eh? ur still awake?
Shop's Closed: aren't you awake too
StarAniseCrab: that's true
StarAniseCrab: life in Jiangsu sure is bad, it literally forced
our Sheng-ge to burn the midnight oil every single night
Shop's Closed: don't even mention it to me
Shop's Closed: my kidney hurts
StarAniseCrab: are you still doing homework? exactly how
much homework do y'all have?
Sheng Wang casually snapped a picture of the paper he was
doing and sent it over.
Shop's Closed: last question, if your message came any later
I would have slept.
The other person didn't reply instantly, Sheng Wang didn't
bother to wait either, he stuffed in his earpiece and continued to
figure out the formula. Around five minutes later, just as Sheng
Wang completed the last section, his phone suddenly vibrated
again.
StarAniseCrab: I just read through the questions
StarAniseCrab: I think my worldview kinda collapsed
StarAniseCrab: I literally can't do a single question????
Sheng Wang wheezed, he replied with a voice message
straight away. "Don't crumble yet, who would even test this on a
regular basis? It's compulsory for everyone in the class to
participate in the Olympiads here, this is the practice paper, I'm
struggling my way through it too
StarAniseCrab: can't tell that you're struggling
StarAniseCrab: no wait HOLD ON!
StarAniseCrab: aren't you still catching up? How are you
already doing competition papers?
Sheng Wang sent a smiley face that was asking for extra
beatings, saying, "Already caught up."
StarAniseCrab: ...
StarAniseCrab: it wasn't even one month???
StarAniseCrab: fk
StarAniseCrab: I shouldn't have came to seek heart attacks in
the middle of the night
Speaking of his arrival in his chat, Sheng Wang recalled the
first sentence in this conversation. He asked, "You said you saw
me on the internet just now? What do you mean?"
StarAniseCrab: oh, hold on, I'll send it to you
Next he tossed a screenshot over.
The screenshot consisted of a status of a person's QQ space
—— someone named "Fuzhong's Confession Page" posted a
picture. It was Sheng Wang, standing by the sports ground.
It was likely taken after a jog during the long break, he wore
a white T-shirt, a school jacket hanging over his left shoulder, a
hand grabbing a bottle of water, the other hand wiping at the
corner of his mouth. There were traces of sweat by his sideburns,
and he was smiling as he talked to someone.
StarAniseCrab: you haven't seen the QQ chat for a while
now, right?
StarAniseCrab: I saw a few girls talking about it in the class
chat last night, saying that their first love flew away, and is now
receiving confessions from girls in other schools
Shop's Closed: ...
Sheng Wang didn't know what to reply to him either, he sent
two stickers about how he didn't know if he wanted to laugh or
cry, and scrolled down from the screenshot.
Below that post was a series of replies so long that the
screenshot didn't capture all of them. Some were lining up to
send tiny hearts emojis, some typed out his name, some said he
was both handsome and valiant. There was even one who
focused on a particularly strange area, saying: Whose hand is it
from the left side of the picture? I think that he's probably a major
hottie, you can tell from the fingers alone.
Another person replied: if he's a major hottie, then I'll put a
blind guess and say that it's Jiang Tian.
Sheng Wang said internally, don't need to blindly guess, it is
Jiang Tian.
He zoomed in on the picture. That hand was svelte and neat,
next to the prominent outline of his wrist, was a tiny little mole.
There were two PE lessons during the supplementary
lessons over the summer break. The girls of Class A hated going
under the Sun, they always found excuses to stay behind in the
classroom and do their work. The boys, otherwise, were pretty
enthusiastic. They generally went to the equipment room, grab a
basketball, and play half-court, with the teacher as the referee.
Sheng Wang was more of the lazy type, but he did show Gao
Tianyang, the PE rep, plenty of respect. He went on court for both
times and coincidentally ended up on the opposite team as Jiang
Tian for both times too.
Jiang Tian usually wore a wristband to play basketball, when
he dribbled the basketball, that tiny mole would be under the
edges of the wristband, appearing and disappearing along with
his movements.
It was really…...pretty handsome.
His phone buzzed again. Sheng Wang blanked out for a
moment before he realised that he seriously stared at Jiang Tian's
hand for such a long time.
He averted his eyes at once, hurriedly closed the picture,
gulped two mouthfuls of water from the cup on the desk, and
finally went back to WeChat as he licked the corner of his lips.
StarAniseCrab sent a few messages again, Sheng Wang gave
all of them a brief sweep, but he already lost any interest in
chatting. After two simple lines exchanged with Crab, they both
let each other know that they would be going to sleep.
There was soon complete silence from Crab's end. However,
Sheng Wang did not intend to sleep yet.
He stuffed the completed physics practice back into his bag,
and looked up to check the time—it was 1.07am.
Ever since he caught up with the syllabus, he no longer
needed to stay up to 2am every night. Perhaps it was because he
has yet to readjust from his previous schedule, he was clearly
quite drowsy, but he felt like he should be doing something.
He rummaged through his bag again—the homework was all
completed, he did the practice for math-physics-chem Olympiads,
he already memorised all of the classical texts, so maybe he
should take a look at the vocabulary list?
He may be thinking of that, but his finger already tapped on
WeChat's icon. He entered and left the personal info page for
three times before he decided to change his profile picture and
nickname in the middle of the night when nobody is awake.
He found a picture of Hot Kid cupping his fist, changed his
profile picture into that, and then entered the four words: "Open
For Business".
（t/n: the name was actually a standard congratulatory phrase used to celebrate a business'
grand opening, meaning "good fortunes for opening of the business" roughly. Fanart of the profile picture
here.(third pic))
Not even two minutes since he made the change, there was
a knock on his bedroom door.
There was a ceiling light switched on in the second floor's
corridor, it wasn't particularly bright. It casted a halo on the floor
between the two bedrooms. Jiang Tian's hair was already dry from
his shower, the warm yellow light from above erased his
sharpness in his features, making him appear gentle.
He raised what he was holding in his hand. "Opening gift."
"What's that?"
Sheng Wang received it with confusion, and turned it
over...
The fuck, a copybook.
(t/n: A copybook is used to practise the handwriting)
"Are you trying to pick a fight?" He asked, annoyed.
Jiang Tian declined to comment. His fingers retracted a little,
saying, "Want it? If not, I'm taking it back."
Sheng Wang talked under his breath for a moment before he
asked, "Did you practice your handwriting to this?"
"Roughly." Jiang Tian said.
"What do you mean by roughly?"
"I followed it twice." Jiang Tian said.
"You call that practicing when you only did it twice?" Sheng
Wang said, completely done, "Why don't you just say that it's
innate."
Jiang Tian even had the guts to agree.
Sheng Wang nearly rolled his eyes out. "I've confirmed,
you're here for a beating."
Laughter rumbled in Jiang Tian's throat, he said properly
again: "Practicing is pretty quick, actually."
Sheng Wang wasn't exactly convinced. "It has to take one
year minimum, no?"
"No need."
"Don't hoodwink me." Sheng Wang deadpanned, "This, I still
know. You might not believe me, but I did practice my handwriting
as a kid, I did it so seriously—"
He stuck out two fingers. "For two years."
This time round, Jiang Tian really did laugh out loud.
His wrist was propped against the door frame, and laughed
with his head looking aside, his Adam's apple slightly trembling
along.
"The hell you're laughing at." Sheng Wang said stonily.
Jiang Tian turned to face him. "Do you want a crash course?"
"Duh!" Sheng Wang eyed him warily after saying that. "Don't
tell me…...you even have tricks to practising your handwriting?"
"It wouldn't be particularly refined, but it's at least readable."
Jiang Tian said.
Sheng Wang suspected he was launching personal attacks,
but beggars can't be choosers. On the basis of the copybook, he
would just suck it up. "Readable is all I need, I'm not planning to
master calligraphy anyway."
Jiang Tian stuck out his palm, his pointer finger beckoned, "A
pen."
Sheng Wang pushed him straight into the room next door.
The table here was already tidied, the chair was empty, but
Jiang Tian did not sit. He took out a red pen from his bag, stooped
and circled a few words on the copybook.
"国(country), 辽(liao), 溪(stream), 覃(Qin/Tan/deep), 鸦(crow),
氧(oxygen)..." Sheng Wang read out a few as Jiang Tian circled,
he couldn't spot a pattern.
Jiang Tian flipped through more than 10 pages, and circled
less than 30 characters. He settled his pen down. "You just need
to practise these, copy them a few times every day, pay a little
more attention when you write on a normal basis, and that's all."
"Really?" Sheng Wang had his doubts. "What's so special
about these words?"
"Fully enclosed, half enclosed, top-down, left-right
structures. I've picked out a few classic examples for all." Jiang
Tian said, "It's like how you do your work, when you master these
few, you master all of them."
(t/n: Right so the reason for putting the CN characters in the earlier part is because Jiang
Tian was talking about the structures of the characters, 国 is fully enclosed, 覃 is top down
and has a lot of straight lines, 氧 is half enclosed ish with a right slanting downwards
stroke. A localization would be "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". According
to wikipedia, a literate college graduate would know between 3k to 4k Chinese characters,
which is honestly a lot if you want to practise your handwriting for all. The words Jiang
Tian picked also consisted of a variety of strokes. )
Sheng Wang's eyes swept around the surroundings. "Do you
have a blank notebook? Lemme try."
Jiang Tian found one for him, and even threw in a pen for
free.
"Just write, I'll memorise my texts." He grabbed the language
textbook that was facing down at the side of the table, and sat at
the windowsill just like the many nights before.
The few night insects at White Horse Alley started crying out
again, in chirps and screams. Sheng Wang briefly paused before
the table. He finally pulled out the chair, sat down, and started
writing the characters circled out on the copybook, stroke by
stroke.
Five minutes later, he let out a long sigh of relief. He dangled
the book right in front of Jiang Tian's face. "I'm done, take a look. I
feel like I've vastly improved."
Jiang Tian gave it a quick scan, and that handsome face of his
instantly went dead.
He didn't bother with his book anymore, he settled the
notebook in front of Sheng Wang again, hoovered over the table,
and demanded like an overseer: "Rewrite it."
"..."
Sheng Wang silently swore in his head, feeling like he was in
kindergarten again.
The young master never saw it coming, not in a million
years, that he seriously stayed up to 2.30am just to practise his
handwriting. By the time the overseer finally nodded, he was so
drowsy that he couldn't even find his own bedroom door.
In the end, he couldn't even remember what kind of fuss he
kicked up. He only knew that when he opened his eyes in the
morning, what he saw was the ceiling in Jiang Tian's room.