Chapter 21: Bad Boy

It was already 10:30 PM, but the school bus was crowded, nearly every seat taken except for one in the very last row.

“You there, student,” called out a teacher wearing a faded red armband. “Sit down quickly. We’re leaving.”

Tan Xueci had always been obedient, and since he had never actually attended a formal school, he possessed a natural, innate awe for teachers. He hurriedly slung his backpack forward and sat in the last row, legs pressed tightly together.

As he looked up and met the teacher’s dark, ashen face and saw the murky black blood between his teeth, his throat tightened inexplicably.

The bus lurched into motion. There were at least thirty students on board, all dressed in blue and white uniforms, heads bowed in silence. No one spoke.

Tan Xueci didn’t dare speak either. About fifteen minutes later, the bus came to a halt in front of Jiahe Private High School.

The students filed out in a line. Tan Xueci was the last to descend. He felt as if he had been here before—no, wait, he was a student here, so of course he had.

But why did he feel a chill running down his spine?

Several teaching buildings stood pitch black. It was so late, yet instead of heading to the dorms to sleep, the students walked toward the classrooms as if they were about to start a lesson.

Tan Xueci stood frozen.

What should he do? He didn’t even know which class was his.

“Hey!” The teacher from earlier, the one with black blood in his teeth, pointed at Tan Xueci. Under the pale lights, his face looked twisted and bruised. “Why aren’t you going to class? Are you trying to skip?!”

“I… I’m not…” Tan Xueci stammered.

He felt that if he didn’t go to class, the man would swallow him alive. He quickly followed the other students, ducking into a random classroom and taking a seat.

His snowy cheeks were bloodless, his palms slick with cold sweat. He hugged his backpack, sitting in the second-to-last row.

A sign hung next to the blackboard, showing a bright red countdown: 30 days until the Gaokao.

Tan Xueci had never been to school and had no real concept of the college entrance exam, but the heavy, solemn silence of the room—broken only by the rustle of pages and the scratch of pens on paper—made him inexplicably nervous.

Then, the teacher walked in carrying a stack of papers.

Their teacher was a tall man in an expensive, well-tailored black suit. He looked impeccably dressed, but under the moonlight reflecting into the dark room, his lips appeared a ghostly, vivid crimson. Even with a smile, he radiated a deeply unsettling energy.

“In this lesson, we will go over the third mock exam,” the teacher said gently. “Class representative, please hand these out.”

A girl in the front row stood up and silently distributed the papers.

“The exam is coming up soon,” the teacher continued. “Most of you performed quite well. There was only one small ‘accident.’ One student in our class received a zero.”

Tan Xueci wasn’t really listening. When the paper landed on his desk, his mind went blank.

He couldn’t understand it. He didn’t even recognize the words “Mock Exam.”

His beautiful face scrunched up as he tried to study it. Suddenly, he felt the atmosphere shift. He looked up and jumped—the entire class had turned their heads to look at him.

In the dark classroom, every face was a sickly, pale green.

The teacher leaned against the podium, smiling at him. “In our class, only student Tan Xueci received a zero in every single subject.”

The classmates stared at him in silence. Cold sweat trickled down Tan Xueci’s slender spine. He swallowed hard. It felt… it felt like having bad grades was a terrible crime.

Am I really this stupid?

I didn’t get a single question right.

Just as the classmates’ faces began to distort, as if they were about to pounce and bite him, the teacher spoke again in a soft, comforting tone. “But I believe he didn’t do it on purpose, right? Xiao Xue will get a 100 next time, won’t he?”

The man’s tone was overly gentle—not like a teacher to a student, but like a man coaxing his wife.

Tan Xueci couldn’t tell the difference. He nodded frantically, promising he would get a 100 next time.

He thought he heard a faint chuckle.

He looked up at the podium in a daze, but the man’s handsome face held no extra expression. He still looked perfectly professional. “Good. In that case, let’s begin the lesson.”

The teacher started explaining the paper. The students remained quiet, listening intently.

A stack of books sat on the corner of Tan Xueci’s desk. He picked one up at random: High School Biology. Something about “the effect of ion concentration outside the nerve fiber membrane on membrane potential.”

He frowned, studying it with great seriousness, but the knowledge simply slid off his brain.

The only word he recognized was “nerve.”

The handwriting in the book was elegant and neat, the notes taken diligently. On one page, a small flower had been drawn in red ink next to the page number. It looked like a girl’s book. But as he flipped further, the notes became messy. When he reached a certain page, his breath hitched.

Written there in large letters was: DIE.

He held his breath. Every page after that was covered in the word DIE, becoming more crowded and frantic, radiating a sense of deranged hatred.

In a panic, he tried to close the book, but he accidentally knocked over a bottle of red ink. It spilled over the words, looking horrifyingly like fresh blood.

Tan Xueci’s fingertips jerked back. Immediately, he felt a puff of cold air against the back of his neck. He turned stiffly and met the pale, smiling face of a girl.

“You’re sitting in my seat,” she said.

Tan Xueci quickly apologized and tried to stand up. But before he could, someone tapped on his desk. The teacher had walked over at some point. “Why isn’t this student listening? Is my teaching not good enough?”

“No,” Tan Xueci whispered.

For the first time, he felt the guilt of being caught daydreaming in class. His pale face was written with tension.

“In that case,” the teacher said, pointing his pointer toward the blackboard. “Go up and solve the problem on the board.”

A diagram was drawn on the board, asking for the “cosine of the included angle.”

Tan Xueci’s vision blurred.

What?

Write what?

There were so many horizontal lines, vertical lines, and crosses.

Tan Xueci’s eyelids turned red, brimming with tears. He didn’t dare go up. He whispered timidly, “I… I’m sorry. I don’t know how.”

“Didn’t you say I was a good teacher?” the man’s voice turned resentful. “Why don’t you know? Or has Xiao Xue not been studying properly?”

To a thick-skinned high school boy, being scolded for not studying would be water off a duck’s back. But for Tan Xueci, who had never even finished primary school and was naturally obedient, tears nearly spilled over. He nervously gripped the hem of his clothes.

“Not studying properly,” the evil spirit said, raising the pointer. The cold tip pressed against the hollow of the boy’s collarbone, nudging the fabric aside to reveal the snowy skin beneath. Many days had passed, but the crimson hickey there was still eye-catching.

“And engaging in ‘puppy love’ too.”

The man’s dark “peach blossom” eyes turned deep. The corners of his mouth twitched upward as he whispered his reproach: “Bad boy.”