Jiang Qihuai watched as the person sitting in front of him stiffened all over, her tense expression showing barely restrained anger. Like a shura climbing out of hell, she twisted her head around.

That gaze—like she would, in the next second, lose control and rush over to devour him alive.

Jiang Qihuai rarely got distracted, but a sudden thought came to him. His line of sight lifted two inches, curious whether steam would puff out from the top of that little groundhog’s head in anger—

If fury could take shape.

The corners of his lips imperceptibly curved up for an instant, then the next second, his face returned to its unshakably indifferent look.

Tao Zhi turned back around.

Jiang Qihuai twirled his pen leisurely, waiting to hear her explanation.

He sat behind her and couldn’t see the groundhog’s expression, only the slight hunch of the girl’s shoulders.

“Teacher, I don’t know how to write it,” Tao Zhi said very softly. “I really want to do my homework well, but my foundation is too poor.”

Quite good at bending and stretching, this one.

Her face was full of sincerity, her voice pitiful and soft. Wang Zhezi’s expression eased slightly. “Even if you can’t write it, you can’t just scribble anything. If you don’t understand, you can ask your classmates or ask me. I’m in the office every day.”

“I don’t want to bother my classmates,” Tao Zhi admitted honestly, “I was just too anxious. I was afraid I couldn’t hand it in before this week, and in a panic, I wrote nonsense. Teacher Wang, I’ll definitely do it properly next time. It might take me longer, but please don’t be angry.”

Wang Zhezi was a soft-hearted person despite a sharp tongue. Seeing her sincerely admit her mistake—and being a thin-skinned little girl at that—his temper rose fast but faded just as quickly. “As long as you’ve got that determination, it’s fine. I’m not afraid of you writing slowly or making mistakes. As long as you have the will to learn, both teachers and classmates are willing to help you. Your front desk, back desk, and your seatmate—ask them more often if you don’t understand.” His tone gentled. “Alright, sit down. Your foundation really is a problem; I’ll think of a solution.”

Tao Zhi obediently responded and sat down.

As she sat, the crook of her knee pressed against the edge of the chair, and she quietly shifted backward with a little push.

Jiang Qihuai’s desk was caught off guard—tipped back at an angle, one side lifting thirty degrees. The pile of papers stacked on it slid down with a clatter, spilling more than half onto the floor.

Jiang Qihuai: “…”

He bent down to pick them up.

Tao Zhi also showed a look of “accidental kindness,” turning back and leaning over to help, one hand on the edge of his desk.

The moment she lowered her head, her expression flipped completely. Pretending to help gather the papers, she leaned closer, controlling her voice and temper as she gritted out between her teeth, “Do I have some deep grudge with you or what?”

Jiang Qihuai picked up a paper. “No.”

“Then why are you doing this to me?” Tao Zhi whispered angrily.

“Why did you make me do your homework?” Jiang Qihuai also kept his voice low.

Tao Zhi picked up a paper and handed it to him. “If you didn’t want to write it, fine. But you agreed, and then deliberately wrote it wrong. Are you even human?”

Jiang Qihuai took it. “Weren’t you the one who threatened me?”

“Then weren’t you the one who lied to me first, saying you were also in the office to make up homework?”

“I never said that.”

“…You—damn it?” Tao Zhi hadn’t expected Jiang Qihuai to be this shameless. She shoved the last paper at him, glaring furiously. “You didn’t say it, but that’s exactly what you meant! You misled me on purpose!”

The two of them crouched under the desk, handing papers back and forth, muttering in low voices—on the surface calm and quiet, but beneath it, turbulent undercurrents.

Jiang Qihuai took it, straightened up, and placed the paper he held on the desk.

Tao Zhi also straightened up and sat back down as if nothing had happened.

Above the desk, the world was peaceful.

Wang Zhezi glanced this way while asking everyone to open their books, not noticing anything unusual.

Two classmates sitting in the row beside them, who’d heard the whole exchange across the aisle, were: “……”

Primary schoolers?

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

Tao Zhi felt the entire class had been utterly flavorless.

Although physics class was usually dull, at least she could sleep—today she was so angry she couldn’t even nap.

She propped her head on her arm, holding a pen, pretending to flip through the book from time to time, checking the clock every five minutes on average, feeling as if the minute hand had frozen.

She took out her phone and sent a WeChat to Ji Fan from under the desk.

Zhizhi Grape: 【I lost.】

Ji Fan replied quickly: 【?】

Zhizhi Grape: 【A fucking asshole transferred into our class, I can’t beat him.】

Ji Fan: 【In what way?】

Zhizhi Grape: 【He tricked me! He played mind games with me!! He’s so scheming!!!】

Ji Fan: 【Don’t make things hard for yourself. Thinking isn’t your strength—play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses, okay? Just fight him outright.】

Tao Zhi: “……”

She didn’t want to respond and angrily threw the phone back. After thinking, she had to admit Ji Fan’s advice did make a bit of sense.

Finally, near the end of class, Tao Zhi looked up as Wang Zhezi finished the last physics example in the book.

“All right, that’s it for today. For homework, finish the remaining problems in the book and the workbook that goes with this lesson.” Wang Zhezi dusted chalk off his hands and walked out of the classroom: “Go eat.”

As soon as Wang Zhezi stepped out, Tao Zhi suddenly stood up, shoved her chair in, and the wooden leg scraped the floor with a grating “screech——” sound.

Tao Zhi turned, looking down from a height at Jiang Qihuai who’d just closed his book, eyes blazing with killing intent: “Fight me.”

Jiang Qihuai raised an eyebrow slightly, a little surprised by her straightforward retort: “I’m busy.”

“I didn’t ask if you’re busy, you might not have understood, ” Tao Zhi patiently explained, “Let me put it another way—you have to let me beat you up.”

Jiang Qihuai sized her up from head to toe: “You want me to fight a groundhog? How to fight—by digging or by cracking sunflower seeds?”

“I want you to—” Tao Zhi paused, belatedly realizing, narrowed her eyes, “Want you to what? A groundhog?”

Tao Zhi felt the last strand of sanity in her brain snap.

At almost the same moment, the back door of the classroom opened and Li Shuangjiang’s head poked in from the doorway: “Huai Ge, Teacher Wang wants you! Go over there for a moment!”

Li Shuangjiang had no idea his one sentence had just averted a disaster, “He looks pretty happy, must be something good.”

Jiang Qihuai turned and left the classroom, with Li Shuangjiang following him out.

Fu Xiling sat there, glanced at Jiang Qihuai’s desk, then looked up at Tao Zhi, wondering whether, with the desk’s owner gone, she would next lift the desk and throw it out the third-floor window.

But Tao Zhi’s attention was elsewhere.

She turned her head. “Do I look like a groundhog?”

Fu Xiling froze, then quickly shook her head. “No.”

Tao Zhi pointed toward the door, still stunned. “Did he just call me a groundhog?”

Fu Xiling didn’t know how to answer that. After a long pause, she finally forced out, “Groundhogs are pretty cute.”

“……”

Tao Zhi didn’t even know why that clumsy, out-of-nowhere reply actually managed to calm her down.

It was as if all the air had leaked out of her—her shoulders slumped, and she sat back down weakly. “Fine.”

She turned her head and saw Fu Xiling taking a lunchbox out from under her desk. “You brought lunch?”

Fu Xiling hummed in response, twisting the lid open. She had grown a little more familiar with Tao Zhi these past few days, and she spoke a bit more than before. “Do you want some?”

The cafeteria food at the Experimental School was decent and not too expensive. Plus, there was a whole street of snack shops just outside the campus. Most students either ate in the cafeteria or went out, and very few brought their own meals.

Tao Zhi wasn’t hungry. She shook her head, lay down on her desk, and took out her phone to send Song Jiang a WeChat message, telling him she wasn’t going to lunch today.

Barely two minutes later, Song Jiang’s head popped in from the same spot where Li Shuangjiang had appeared earlier. “Why aren’t you eating, Ancestor? What’s wrong now?”

“None of your business, old man,” Tao Zhi said listlessly.

Song Jiang hopped in, carrying two bottles of sweet milk and two boxes of wafer rolls, tossing them in front of her before plopping himself onto the desk beside theirs. “I’m just worried about my old man here. Every day your life goal is to eat and sleep, yet suddenly you tell me you’re skipping lunch?”

Fu Xiling added softly while holding her chopsticks, “She didn’t sleep in class either.”

Song Jiang nodded solemnly. “Then she must’ve had a breakup.”

“I broke up your mom,” said the model citizen impatiently, lifting her head and frowning. “Timely Rain, do I look good?”

Song Jiang had known Tao Zhi since primary school—they were basically childhood friends. He’d seen her face so long it had become invisible to him. “Yeah, you’re good-looking.”

Fu Xiling bit a piece of vegetable and said, “She’s asking if you think she looks like a groundhog.”

Song Jiang rubbed his chin. “Huh? I think—”

Before he could finish thinking, the back door of Class 2 Grade 11 was suddenly pushed open again. The poor wooden door creaked, and an unfamiliar boy stepped in.

“Fu Xiling,” the boy said familiarly as he walked right in, “you’ll finally eat with me today, right?”

Tao Zhi turned her head.

The boy wore the senior-year uniform, his jacket half on, half off. A black skull was drawn on the white cuff, and instead of uniform pants, he wore tight jeans.

A real old-school non-mainstream type.

Tao Zhi looked at his face again, took two seconds to recall, and remembered him—

The jerk who’d been groping girls in the hallway.

Fu Xiling’s hand holding the chopsticks tensed, her body stiffening. She turned her head nervously. “I brought lunch today…”

The non-mainstream boy frowned impatiently. “Why do you have an excuse every day? Didn’t we agree you’d eat with me today?”

“I’m sorry,” Fu Xiling stammered, “but I never said yes…”

“That’s not cool, man. I already told my buddies I’m bringing you along today, don’t make me lose face like this.”

The boy spoke as he stepped forward, yanking open the last empty desk in the back row and reaching out to grab her.

Song Jiang stood up at once, pressing a hand down on the desk corner, his tone polite but firm. “Brother, the girl said she doesn’t want to go with you.”

The non-mainstream boy turned his head. “Who the hell are you? I’m talking to my girlfriend, what’s it to you?”

Both Song Jiang and Tao Zhi turned their heads at the same time to look at Fu Xiling for confirmation.

“No!” Fu Xiling said in a panic, “I didn’t agree to anything!”

Song Jiang chuckled. “Hear that? She’s not into you. Quit pestering her.”

The non-mainstream boy, humiliated, flushed red and came straight at him, raising his hand to shove. “Who the fuck are you, huh? Can’t mind your own business—”

Tao Zhi’s eyes swept over the scene. She caught an opening as he stepped forward, quickly lifted her foot, and kicked Jiang Qihuai’s desk leg forward. The desk and chair moved together, slamming right into the boy. Song Jiang seized the moment, grabbed the boy’s wrist, yanked it forward, and with his other hand locked the guy’s neck, slamming him down onto the desk with a loud bang.

“Hey,” Song Jiang said, panting but grinning, “why’d you have to start swinging, huh?”

The non-mainstream boy clearly knew how to fight too—his free hand swung straight toward Song Jiang’s stomach. The two of them started brawling at the back of the classroom, desks and chairs flying in chaos. With a loud crash, Jiang Qihuai’s already-shoved desk toppled completely.

It fell!

Jiang Qihuai fell!

Tao Zhi cheerfully watched his desk flip over, papers scattering all across the floor. The two hot-blooded male students were trampling on them mid-fight, mixing punches and judo holds, each step stamping more mess onto the chaos.

Over there, Song Jiang landed another kick squarely on the non-mainstream boy’s stomach. As the fight inched dangerously closer to her side, Tao Zhi quickly stepped out of the way—just in time for the non-mainstream boy to crash onto her chair.

Leaning against the wall, Tao Zhi frowned and barked instructions. “Timely Rain, can you even fight? Kick him that way! We’re eating over here.”

Song Jiang shot her a quick look, only to get another punch in return from his opponent.

And just then—the classroom’s back door opened for the fourth time that noon.

Jiang Qihuai pushed the door open. The moment he stepped in, the chaos inside made him stop dead in his tracks.

He stood in the doorway, eyes calm as he surveyed the scene.

His desk was overturned. Everything from inside had spilled out. His chair had somehow slid all the way across the room. His backpack—God knows how—was dumped into the dirty mop bucket by the wall. Papers and books littered the entire floor. Two boys were still grappling in the middle of it, rolling and punching each other right over the mess.

Right in front of him, a torn physics worksheet fluttered in the air, caught by the wind, spinning as it fell—landing at his feet, stamped with two big, black shoeprints.

Jiang Qihuai: “……”