Chapter 23: The Last Ten Seconds

Inside the narrow VIP corridor, the cold wind cut through and stung everyone’s cheeks.

Ethan’s wrist was motionless in Mateo’s grip. The fingertips of his other hand, however, moved at a leisurely pace to the zipper pull on Xu Zhou’s jacket and, with provoking intent, pulled it down again.

“Zzzip.”

The sound of the metal zipper teeth sliding open was unusually clear in the dead corridor.

The collar, which Mateo had pulled all the way up to the top moments before, was now fully open.

The searchlight’s white beam came down dead straight. It illuminated a patch of Xu Zhou’s startlingly pale skin, and underneath his collarbone, a light red mark shimmered in the dim glow.

The mark had clear edges, fresh, obviously pressed into the skin with unsparing force a short while ago.

At nearly the same second, Gu Yanli and Mateo’s gazes were both pricked by that glaring trace of red.

Mateo’s pupils shrank all at once.

How could he fail to recognize the kind of ambiguous mark left behind from a struggle?

He even forgot his standoff with Ethan. He reached out roughly to open Xu Zhou’s collar, his voice full of frenzied fury.

“Who the hell did this?!”

“Let go.”

Gu Yanli’s voice finally carried a hint of suppressed brutality.

He did not answer Mateo. He only stepped forward with an expressionless face, his tall form pressing in with suffocating force.

“Reyes, I’ll warn you one last time. Take your filthy hands off him.”

“Filthy? I’m his goddamn roommate!”

Mateo’s temples bulged. He did not release the wrist in his grip. Instead, he used his other arm to hook Xu Zhou’s waist brutally, trying to drag Xu Zhou into his arms.

The smile in Ethan’s eyes disappeared at once.

He snapped his wrist and reversed it into an extremely tricky joint lock against Mateo’s palm. The other hand kept a steady shield in front of Xu Zhou.

The three heirs of Saint Lester’s most prestigious families were locked in a tense, sword-drawn standoff inside the narrow corridor.

The huge broadcast screen above, which had not yet switched off, projected this tense scene into the air.

Students who had not yet left the arena went mad. The Saint Lester anonymous forum lagged immediately under the raging torrent.

[BREAKING! Don’t sleep tonight! The VIP corridor has turned into a fight ring! The Big Three are fighting over someone on the spot!]

[1L (OP): Guys, I’m at the scene! Reyes and President Hawthorne just started throwing punches! President Gu is joining in too!]

[22L: Wait, the big screen zoomed in! Xu Zhou’s collar was pulled open. That mark below his collarbone… it’s a fingerprint, right? It’s definitely a man’s handprint!]

[45L: That spot! That special admit spent two hours in the body conditioning room with President Hawthorne this afternoon! Ahhh!]

[89L: Wrong! Reyes’s face is green! President Gu’s expression looks like he wants to tear President Hawthorne into pieces!]

[112L: God, Xu Zhou is sandwiched among three furious men like a top-tier art piece that could be shredded at any moment.]

Bai Qi stood frozen in the shadows at the corridor’s bend.

He originally came to the corridor holding that crumpled VIP standby slip, hoping to test his luck, wondering if he could run into Gu Yanli and ask why he had been removed from the head table.

But the moment he reached the bend, he saw this.

Through the cold iron mesh, he watched Gu Yanli lose his composure for a rare moment and darken, his overcoat scraping a white mark across the narrow wall.

He watched Ethan, the normally untouchable, rule-obsessed president, drop even his ever-reliable gentleman’s smile for the sake of grabbing Xu Zhou away.

These three had always been proper, restrained, and elegant when they stood in front of him.

Bai Qi felt the paper’s corner bite into his palm. He slowly lowered his head and looked at the review form, which the cold wind had already crumpled beyond shape.

He had used every tactic to preserve his dignity, yet it meant nothing in their eyes. At this moment, they would not give an inch over a special admit who was doing everything he could to hide.

In the middle of the corridor, Xu Zhou was squeezed between the three men, his back sweating from the heat.

Looking down, he shifted his weight, and the silver leather chain locked on his right ankle let out a faint, grating metallic sound.

As an ordinary modern worker who only wanted the perfect attendance scholarship, Xu Zhou could not allow himself to receive a serious school punishment for getting into a group fight.

“Are your hands really that free?”

Xu Zhou spoke up suddenly. His pretty face, flushed pink inside the jacket, carried no expression. He swept a glance across the three young masters’ tense arms.

His tone was cold. “Why don’t I hand the attendance machine over to you? You can all clock in together.”

The three paused at the same time.

“Xu Zhou, about this afternoon in the body training room…” Gu Yanli started.

“Junior, you’re sweating. If the wind blows on you, you’ll catch a cold.” Ethan’s fingertips once again touched his zipper.

“Come with me.” Mateo simply grabbed his jacket sleeve.

“Enough. Quit pretending.”

Xu Zhou cut them off. His voice was not loud, but every word was clear in the corridor.

“Are you helping me or detaining me? Doesn’t Saint Lester understand the phrase ‘I don’t need it’?”

He glanced at the attendance machine. It showed 9:29:50.

Ten seconds left.

“Teacher.”

The attendance teacher, who had been hugging a binder and hiding behind the machine, jumped. When they looked into Xu Zhou’s peach-blossom eyes, beautiful and utterly calm, they nearly burst into tears.

“Xu Zhou?”

“It’s 9:29:50 now.”

Xu Zhou looked over Gu Yanli’s shoulder and gave the attendance teacher a perfectly innocent smile.

“According to Article 14 of the special admit code, tonight’s event duty is over. I can clock out and leave school now, right?”

The teacher took one look at the three heirs’ nearly devouring stares, wiped their cold sweat wildly, and nodded like a chicken pecking rice.

“Yes, yes! Swipe it, quick!”

“Got it.”

Before the ten-second countdown ended, Xu Zhou moved smoothly to the side.

First, he curled a finger and, as if casually, flicked it against Ethan’s wrist bone. Ethan’s wrist went numb, and the hand on the zipper opened by reflex.

Taking that opening, Xu Zhou slid slickly out from under Mateo’s outstretched arm.

Like a slippery fish, he squeezed through the gap between Gu Yanli and the guardrail.

“Ding. Attendance successful. Have a nice weekend.”

With the crisp prompt from the machine, Xu Zhou pulled up the huge No. 7 jacket, wrapped himself tightly, and ran into the night without looking back.

His hurried back looked exactly like an office worker who had finally made it to Friday quitting time. Staying one more second would be an insult to the weekend.

Only cold wind was left in the corridor.

Mateo looked at his empty palm, then at Ethan, whose expression was gloomy, then at Gu Yanli, who had already turned away with a cold smile.

“f*ck!” Mateo punched the steel wire mesh beside him, the sharp noise ringing in the air.

[Latest updates]

[201L: Damn, that special admit really knows what he’s doing! He clocked out and ran like it was a hundred-meter sprint!]

[215L: His back on the big screen is amazing. That golden No. 7 jacket hangs loose on him, showing a strip of glowing white ankle. Running like that, he looks like a little runaway elf.]

[230L: The Big Three are still standing in the corridor in the cold wind while Xu Zhou is already on the school’s free late-night bus home hahahaha.]

[248L: Wait… has anyone thought about this? Xu Zhou took Reyes’s jacket, he’s still wearing President Gu’s chain on his ankle, and he’s still carrying President Hawthorne’s mark on his body… Are we even going to see that special admit alive on Monday?]

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