Although the first semester of the first year of high school was almost over, Zhao Youyue still had barely any presence at school or in her class. The winter chill had settled into the hallways, and the students were buried under thick coats and even thicker stacks of review materials, yet she remained as unremarkable as the gray sky outside.
The reason for her invisibility was simple. Her grades sat steadily around twentieth place in the class rankings. That result counted as above average, but it was far from excellent. In a competitive environment where only the top five and the bottom three drew any real attention from the faculty, a middle-of-the-pack student like her was easily overlooked. With results like that, no one had any reason to remember her name or her face.
In group activities, things were no different. During events like the autumn sports meet, where the air was crisp and filled with the scent of sun-warmed track rubber, or the New Year's performance night, she remained a spectator. She stood in the back of the crowd, the cold biting at her ears. The only thing she could do was stand on the sidelines and shout "666!" for the talented students who actually possessed impressive skills. She was a ghost in the audience, a witness to everyone else's glory.
Then there were the academic competitions.
Zhao Youyue had never even considered joining those high-level intellectual battles. The students who participated in them existed on a completely different plane from her, their minds filled with complex formulas and abstract theories. She had glanced at those competition problems a few times before when her former deskmate, Zhou Fang, showed them to her. In Zhao Youyue's opinion, those questions simply weren't made for humans to solve. They looked like alien hieroglyphs designed to induce headaches.
Zhou Fang had entered the chemistry competition, and her life had become a blur of lab coats and periodic tables. Apparently, the first period of evening self-study was reserved for special training sessions. Students like Zhou Fang, who were genuine top students, had to squeeze every bit of time out of their breaks to finish their regular homework. Otherwise, they would never complete everything before midnight. How could they possibly lounge around like Zhao Youyue did?
Originally, Zhao Youyue had planned to improve her real-world grades by studying through Xu Jing inside the manga. She had hoped that within one semester she could use that persona's drive to push herself into the top five of the class.
But reality didn't follow her carefully laid plans.
And honestly, that was all Su Li's fault.
That woman insisted on putting Xu Jing through endless, soul-crushing suffering in Pure Love. Zhao Youyue still read the comic obsessively, her heart aching for the girl on the page, but Xu Jing herself wasn't a genius. With her attention scattered in so many directions by the tragedy surrounding her, her learning efficiency had dropped sharply. It was hard to solve calculus when your mother was dying and the world was falling apart.
Later, Zhao Youyue decided to go all in.
She simply pushed Xu Jing completely into darkness and made her fall deeply in love with Yang Qianqian. She watched as the girl's obsession replaced her textbooks.
Love, after all, was the number one enemy of studying.
Sure, there were a few rare prodigies who could maintain excellent grades while dating early. But the truth was that most students who started relationships during school saw their grades plummet. If that weren't the case, why would the schools forbid early romance so strictly?
Through Xu Jing, Zhao Youyue had even experienced the hollow, aching feeling of unrequited love inside the comic world. It truly was heart-wrenching to feel that level of devotion and receive nothing but crumbs in return. That experience gradually influenced her real self as well, leaving her feeling a bit more cynical than before.
Love wasn't a good thing.
It was better to stay far away from it.
As long as you never expected anything from anyone, you would never be disappointed by their betrayal.
Even though Zhao Youyue had not achieved her original goal through Xu Jing, her grades had still improved a little through sheer osmosis. On top of that, she always put on the appearance of working very hard whenever the teachers were around. She sat straight, her pen moving across the paper with purpose.
Because of that act, the teachers actually had a fairly good impression of her. They saw a quiet, diligent girl who stayed out of trouble.
None of them knew that whenever the teachers weren't present, she would immediately pull out her phone and start playing with it under the cover of her desk.
She was a complete phone addict.
Her phone was practically her true body. Without the smooth glass and the glowing screen in her hand, Zhao Youyue became anxious and miserable. It was her window to the world she actually cared about.
As for her homework, most of the difficult questions were solved by searching for the answers online. Thinking them through herself felt far too painful and time-consuming when a solution was only a few taps away.
Fortunately, her grades remained stable and decent enough to keep her under the radar. Otherwise, if she kept skipping evening self-study sessions like this, Lao Qiu would have called her in for a "heart to heart talk" within minutes. In the end, she would be "voluntarily persuaded" to attend the evening study sessions in the cold, silent classroom.
If that happened, her weekends would be ruined too.
Other students only got a four-hour break on Sunday before they had to return to school. Zhao Youyue, however, could go straight home on Friday and only come back on Monday morning.
She loved having fun and cherished her freedom. In her opinion, shrinking a two-day weekend into just a few hours was practically student abuse. Exam-oriented education was an awful, soul-sucking machine. It crushed the students' inherent talents and creativity.
Of course, she herself had never possessed any special talents or creativity to begin with.
Well.
Maybe having no presence counted as a talent in its own way? It allowed her to move through the world like a ghost, untouched by the drama of her peers.
As for creativity, Zhao Youyue did have some of that.
Her creativity when it came to stirring up trouble in the fictional world was actually quite impressive.
Her Qidian account, Youyue, had gradually gained some recognition on both the Qidian novel platform and various manga sites. Whenever she read a novel or comic that pleased her, she would reward the creator with a League Leader donation, her digital coins falling like rain.
Even Pure Love had received one from her recently.
Every time Su Li released new chapters that followed Zhao Youyue's script perfectly, Zhao Youyue felt extremely satisfied. Naturally, she rewarded the author for her cooperation. After all, one thousand yuan was just pocket change for a rich young lady like her.
Besides, having the League Leader title would give her more authority later when she chose to confront Su Li. It would also make her more influential when rallying other readers for a cause.
She was already eagerly anticipating how Su Li would face the explosive reaction from the fans after they read the brutal ending she had helped orchestrate.
Unfortunately, it was only Monday.
The final chapter of Pure Love wouldn't appear in Wind Manga until the weekend. Meanwhile, the final exams were scheduled for next Tuesday, the tension in the school rising like a physical weight.
Zhao Youyue couldn't help wondering what kind of mindset the student readers would have when they walked into those exams after seeing the bloody ending.
As far as she knew, Jiang Chao from her class was a loyal fan of Pure Love. He was exactly the type to be devastated by the "good boat" finale.
Sadly, he was no longer Wang Yang's deskmate. The two of them talked too much about games and novels, so Lao Qiu had mercilessly separated them during the mid-semester seating change.
Zhao Youyue silently offered Jiang Chao a moment of sympathy.
She wondered whether he would storm over to confront Su Li after reading the ending. Or perhaps he should worry about his own exams instead.
After learning that Su Li was a beautiful female manga artist, Jiang Chao had immediately declared her his favorite author. Since then, he had been crazily recommending Pure Love to all the boys in their class, his eyes bright with a fanatical light.
The results of his preaching were surprisingly good.
After all, they were teenage boys. Even if they ignored the plot entirely, the fanservice in the manga alone was more than enough to attract their attention.
Jiang Chao also loved repeating all kinds of promises Su Li had supposedly made. He spoke about things like how the ending would definitely be satisfying, how every character would find happiness, and how a creator with such great integrity and respect for readers like Su Li would never betray their expectations.
Under Jiang Chao's influence, many boys genuinely believed that the beautiful female manga artist treated her readers incredibly well.
A creator with such moral integrity was truly rare in the industry.
Every time Zhao Youyue saw the way Jiang Chao's eyes lit up whenever he mentioned Su Li, she felt certain that he was doomed to a massive heartbreak.
When a fan turned into an anti-fan, the backlash was far more terrifying than anything ordinary haters could produce.
Now that Jiang Chao was no longer Wang Yang's deskmate, Wang Yang's new seatmate was Qiu Pengcheng.
This guy was a truly excellent student. He was the class's study committee member, upright and proper in every way, his uniform always crisp and his desk perfectly organized.
Unfortunately, students like him tended to be rather boring to those who didn't share their academic zeal.
During breaks, he simply sat quietly at his desk doing his homework, his pen scratch-scratch-scratching against the paper. In the evening, he would attend training sessions for physics and math competitions during the first and second periods.
This left Wang Yang, a devoted web novel reader, in a miserable, lonely situation.
His new deskmate had absolutely no interest in novels and no spare time to read them.
Whenever Wang Yang ran into difficult homework problems, he could simply borrow Qiu Pengcheng's work and "reference" it.
Although Qiu Pengcheng was upright, he wasn't rigid or stingy with his notes. He allowed Wang Yang to "reference" his homework without making a fuss.
Of course, that was technically wrong. But refusing to let your deskmate glance at your homework would also make you seem rather unfriendly and arrogant.
Besides, Qiu Pengcheng had no spare time to explain every single problem until Wang Yang understood it. And whether Wang Yang would even listen to a long lecture was another question entirely.
So it was easier to turn a blind eye and simply let him copy the answers.
That way, they could maintain a friendly relationship without wasting anyone's time.
As it happened, Zhao Youyue's deskmate had also changed.