"We are back, sir~" Jay-Z announced with a grin. The principal had left by now, and Yùnxiāo was waiting for them.
"Thank you, boys... now sit down. I'll start the class after a light interview with you," Yùnxiāo said with a gentle smile, turning to his son. "Sit down, A-Lěi... and say thank you to your friends..." He said this while cleaning the whiteboard.
Fenix took a deep breath after placing the benches on the ground, stretching his back. He heard his teacher address Liànlěi as "A-Lěi." It was familiar, yet warmly unfamiliar since he had never heard it used in real life before.
Before he could push the bench toward the window to fix its position, Liànlěi stepped closer with a smile.
"Thank you..." He stopped deliberately, realizing he didn't know the other boy's name.
Jay-Z gave a squeeze at Fenix's back, as if he needed to remind him of reality—and their mission. Fenix gasped softly before quickly slapping the hand away from behind him.
"I-It's Fenix Crimson..." he said with a small smile, still embarrassed from the earlier incident.
"Fenix Crimson... unique name... Crimson sounds deeply poetic..." Liànlěi said softly. He helped Fenix fix the bench in its location and then quickly grabbed his notebook, writing something down in Chinese characters.
Fenix couldn't read it. Was it his own name written in Chinese? He didn't know.
Jay-Z danced his eyebrows at Fenix. "You heard that, right?~" he whispered into his ear, making Fenix shiver lightly.
Fenix huffed and moved away. "Your mouth smells bad... brush sometimes, bro..." he mumbled with an embarrassed and stubborn look before catching Liànlěi's beautiful doe eyes again.
"Your name is also... beautiful... reminds me of someone warm..." Fenix said.
He didn't know the second half of that sentence would break out of his mouth. Actually, he meant the characters he and Jay-Z had talked about earlier—Hua Cheng and Xie Lian. He bit his tongue immediately, as if punishing himself.
"Good move, bro... even by accident... all the best for your mission," Jay-Z teased softly before retreating to his seat.
The other friends laughed soundlessly and high-fived. The normal classmates were simply observing the new student.
Fenix's attention shifted to Liànlěi's light chuckle... too light to hear, yet loud enough to be felt by the heart... as if he was trying to keep limits even when smiling... yet it still felt right.
"All credit goes to my Zūn fù," Liànlěi said in half-English, half-Chinese.
Fenix blinked. He didn't know much Chinese—only gēge as big brother and Lǎozǔ as grandmaster.
Liànlěi realized by his face that he was confusing them again, so he quickly tried to correct himself but... he wasn't really good at English either, just as his father had said.
"Um! I mean... what..." He bit his lip, momentarily forgetting how to address his father in this language. "Um... who is also another reason for our birth... second..." He trailed off, his face turning red.
The class heard his stumbling, and they broke into laughter—not humiliating, but fond.
Fenix's own cheeks got red. It sounded innocent, yet somehow sounded like something else entirely! That boy wasn't fully innocent!
"It's called 'Father' in English, A-Lěi..." His father said with a light smile, struggling to stay controlled. Since he was a new teacher, he didn't want to be strict with them right away... besides, the year had only just started for the 10th grade.
"God, that is such a cute BL drama already!" Jimmy whispered while biting her own notebook.
"I'm hooked by now... need to watch the whole drama of this urban-style cultivation in school..." Kayel whispered secretly to Sole. Sole nodded with his soft, genius smirk.
"O-Oh... father, huh?" Fenix learned, clearing his throat, feeling he was blushing like an idiot.
"S-Sorry, I'm not good at English!" Liànlěi said quickly, embarrassed by his poor language skills and the awkward phrasing about his father.
"It's fine, it's fine... not everybody is Shakespeare here~ If we were, English wouldn't be listed in our booklist, right guys?" Jay-Z said a bit loudly to everyone.
"Yeah, right!" Everyone agreed with a chuckle.
Liànlěi smiled, his embarrassment fading a bit. He felt welcomed here... A tiny cause for his foreign euphoria.
Yùnxiāo chuckled along with them faintly and said casually, "See... they have accepted you. Now don't skip meals from anxiety..."
Everyone gasped like they had uncovered a very big secret.
"Zūn fù!" Liànlěi squeaked lightly because his father had just exposed his anxiety right in front of the class.
Well, it wasn't anything too big... But still embarrassing.
"A sweet cultivator like you shouldn't skip meals!"
"Food puppets will appear without the gentle touches of your spiritual energy!"
"Both senior and junior cultivators need to be healthy for battles!"
"All you two need is a sword and your robes, sir!"
The class echoed with playful comments.
Yùnxiāo couldn't help but chuckle lightly again, his shoulders shaking. He took a deep breath, pushing back his hair from the perfect "widow's peak" at the middle of his hairline—something both father and son had.
"We only look like cultivators, we promise!" both father and son echoed in unison.
Fenix smiled at the warm banter around him... it felt like more than just any boring class at the beginning of January. It was a ceremony without lanterns. He felt lighter.
He leaned back in his seat and watched everyone, feeling for the first time...
He was going to miss this year...
And this year would be memorable.
The class continued with some basic instructions first. One by one, everyone said their names, family member names, and their aim in life.
Liànlěi sat silently, his brown eyes on the students as his father asked about them. His pen moved as each student spoke their name.
"That guy is mysterious, isn't he?" Kayel said from behind.
Fenix leaned back, hearing him while keeping his eyes on Liànlěi. He hummed thoughtfully before nodding.
"He knows well how to keep secrets... look, writing in Chinese so we can't read it even if we steal it," Jay-Z whispered.
"Why does Google exist?~ We'll Google it!" Jimmy said.
"Until then, the notebook will be back to its Dàozǔ..." Fenix said with a dry, hopeless laugh because he was dying of curiosity. But he didn't know how to actually start that stupid mission.
"Not too hard, it seems... we'll just take the notebook and take a picture... that's it," Sole joined in lightly, which made everyone a little shocked.
Kayel and Jay-Z got another chance to tease.
"Well, well... look at our nerd! He is just chatting with us about the Chinese bird instead of solving physics..." Jay-Z said lightly among their friends and gave a light punch to Sole's upper arm.
"He's finally human instead of GPT," Kayel added.
Fenix looked at Sole with a bit of surprise too. "Seriously, bro... you could be interested in humans too... or... is it actually you..."
His friends blinked, then laughed silently ; poor Sole was the center of the teasing now.
"So is it a love triangle, huh?~" Jimmy teased.
Sole huffed, despite his face heating up. "I'm straight... and I'm just curious about deep Chinese tradition, and Lei seems to meet my expectations perfectly. He's more traditional than normal Chinese people... like an actual cultivator."
"So say all of us..." Kayel said.
"Who isn't? Everyone's hot topic is him now," Jimmy said while noting what Yùnxiāo was writing on the board. "And start writing, boys... or those notes will fade away like ashes, and God knows if Sir will get upset or not. He looks... calm, but surely dangerous if he gets angry."
"Stop overthinking... he just came today and he'll break our bones without a trial of a week? He won't do it if he has dangerous mood swings like sea tides," Kayel whispered when Yùnxiāo stepped closer and stood beside Liànlěi, talking about something very lowly.
"Shh! If we get punished for your nonsense, then you're gonna do our homework all alone," Sole warned Kayel and Jay-Z.
They rolled their eyes but silenced themselves.
Fenix giggled, too lightly, so that only his shoulders shook. "Great shush, bro," he praised Sole.
Sole hid a proud smile under his hand while writing.
"Tsunamis—are a dangerous kind of disaster. It is the Japanese phrasing for large, long harbor waves. There are records of tsunamis which have wiped away lots of large buildings in Japan, reaching up to 12–15 feet high... The risk is not only in Japan but in lower-location countries and islands. It keeps getting more dangerous as the ice melts and raises the sea levels," Yùnxiāo explained, teaching passionately.
The others nodded, highlighting their books. Fenix did the same, and his eyes flicked to Liànlěi, who hadn't highlighted any of the lines. He just nodded and thoughtfully drank water from his bottle.
"Doesn't he need to highlight them?" Jimmy whispered.
"Maybe he doesn't have the illness we have of forgetting things like old people," Kayel said with a sigh of dramatic jealousy.
"Quiet," Yùnxiāo ordered, firm but gentle. All of them got silent again.
"Anyways... There is a lot of history around it... so now students, you'll read the paragraphs whenever I ask you to read, understood?" He said after looking at the students.
"Yes, sir..." The class replied.
Just like that, the class continued. Then, when the bell rang after 50 minutes, the class exhaled.
"Since it's only the beginning of the class for this year... I'll only give the homework as reading what I've taught..." Yùnxiāo said and wrote something on the whiteboard.
'[From page 10 to 15 reading and 20 MCQ homework (after reading the whole pages, not just copy-pasting the questions).]'
The class groaned.
"What the hell?! He's so cruel, guys!" Kayel held his head at the announcement on the board, eyes wide. "Look at the writing in the brackets! Those words are cold as a blade and hot as blood!"
"He has sword techniques in writing too!" Jay-Z said dramatically while holding his heart and falling onto Kayel.
"He's nothing like his son..." Jimmy said with a sigh.
"Just because he believes in justice doesn't mean he's cruel..." Sole reasoned.
"How will you know my pain of reading the whole chapter, understanding it, and then writing the questions without peeking at the answers!?" Kayel cried out.
Liànlěi watched silently. His brown eyes sparked under the sunlight from the window. A gentle breeze made his hair float softly. "They would faint if they tasted the Chinese education system," Liànlěi mumbled faintly with a soft smile to himself, as if he was used to these structured things.
Yùnxiāo came to Liànlěi and spoke, switching to his mother tongue to be clear.
"Xiàkè le, A-Lěi... qù wǒ gěi nǐ kàn de nàge chēzhàn, zuò dì yī bān chē huíjiā, míngbái ma?" (Class is over, A-Lei... go to the station I showed you, take the first bus home, understand?)
Liànlěi blinked lightly, processing the instructions.
"Míngbái, Zūn fù. Wǒ kěyǐ zìjǐ huíqù..." (Understood, Father. I can go back by myself...) Liànlěi said with a light, respectful bow.
And then his father left. Everyone stood up. "May God bless you, sir," they wished as Yùnxiāo walked away with a small polite smile and a single nod.
The door clicked shut, leaving Liànlěi alone with the class for the first time—and Fenix's friends were already grinning like predators who just found the cutest and mysterious prey for their mission.