Chapter 24: Schemes for Monday

St. Lester’s anonymous forum, in the small hours of the night, had moved far beyond “crash.”

The specially admitted programmers on the school’s tech team were forced to rebuild the servers three times tonight. Every time they barely got the page back up, it drowned again in a flood of live GIFs and towering forum threads.

One programmer, spitting blood in the server room, started a thread to vent:

[Please, the Big Three, and please, that special admit with the god-tier face. You lot are fighting it out in the stadium, I’m in here holding the servers together. Show mercy!]

The gossip-crazed crowd had no intention of listening.

The main post read:

[Don’t sleep! St. Lester has been turned completely upside down tonight!]

The replies beneath it flew so fast they blurred.

Reyes clearing a railing to hand over the battle jacket. Hawthorne pulling the zipper open to expose red fingerprints. President Gu stepping in to lock an ankle. Every action had been cropped into HD GIFs and was rocketing around the forum.

Someone even posted emotionally:

[When that special admit’s face went up on the big screen, I forgot to breathe. That cold white skin, those lazy peach-blossom eyes, looking at garbage like it was the love of a lifetime. Reyes’ leather jacket draped across him made him look cold and fragile at the same time. But the look he gave the camera was indifferent to the core. I’m dying.]

And someone had already been mapping out the Monday schedule:

[Xu Zhou walked off with Reyes’ battle jacket, President Gu’s chain locked on his ankle, and President Hawthorne’s fingerprints on his skin. Don’t forget, Young Master Vale of the Black Rose Society and Senior Adrian of the classical music club haven’t made a move yet.]

***

Meanwhile, the late-night school bus was rolling and swaying down a bumpy road halfway up the mountain.

Only a handful of regular students who had stayed to the end of the game were still on board. The cold white fluorescent light cast pale shadows across empty rows of seats.

Xu Zhou sat alone in the last row, pulling the absurdly oversized golden No. 7 jacket tight around himself. He drew the zipper all the way up to his throat, just enough to cover the two red marks under his collarbone.

Ethan had pressed them into his skin without holding back.

The stiff leather collar scraped against his neck. It itched, and he frowned with disgust.

“Shit, Xu Zhou. You’re going to fly to heaven tonight.”

Joey, his curls whipped by the night wind, dashed up into the bus. He moved quietly to the last row and sat down directly beside Xu Zhou. His eyes were huge, his face saying, you were hiding this from me all along. He dropped his voice.

“You know the forum’s already blown up, right?”

Xu Zhou lifted an eyelid lazily.

“Let it blow.”

Bai Qi got on right after, carrying a thick stack of lecture notes.

He caught sight of Xu Zhou in the back row at once, and the black-and-gold leather jacket on his body.

Joey shut his mouth, quietly shifted a seat away, and pretended to be invisible.

Bai Qi’s hands tightened around the notes, creasing the corners of the paper. He took a deep breath, walked to the back row, and sat down in the empty seat across the aisle from Xu Zhou.

“Do you think this is fun, Xu Zhou?”

His voice was very low, with a roughness he could not hold back. “Wearing Reyes’ clothes, carrying President Hawthorne’s marks. Do you think that’s the privilege of St. Lester?”

Xu Zhou had been leaning back with his eyes shut, resting. He opened them lazily.

At the sight of the red rims around Bai Qi’s eyes, his peach-blossom eyes showed no discomfort at being exposed. There was only a cold, nearly weary indifference.

“It’s not fun.”

He shrank deeper into the big jacket, his voice muffled. “Reyes’ brain short-circuited. If he were here right now, I’d peel this off and hand it back to him this second.”

Bai Qi’s fingers dug into the creases of the lecture notes, knuckles white.

Xu Zhou’s indifferent, put-upon attitude was more of a sharp slap in the face than any display of pride.

“What do you understand…” Bai Qi bit his lip hard, his voice thin under the roar of the engine. “Do you think this is the first time they’ve pushed someone into the middle? If you can’t hold your ground one day, they’ll replace you as if you were trash.”

“Then tell them to hurry. If they can move me back to an ordinary dorm by tomorrow, that would be great.”

Xu Zhou took out his student handbook and flipped to the transfer application. “This has to be stamped by the student council. You’re close with President Hawthorne. Can you ask him if he’s working on Saturday?”

Bai Qi stared at the application form, personal information already filled in. He was struck completely speechless.

“The stop’s here.”

The bus had just come to a stop when Xu Zhou stood up, gathering the overlong leather sleeves into his fists as he left.

Joey grabbed his backpack and hurried after him.

The fluorescent light flickered. Only Bai Qi remained in his seat, hugging the wrinkled lecture notes.

***

Meanwhile, in the old aristocratic salon in the north quarter of St. Lester Academy.

Theodore Vale sat in a carved chair upholstered in calfskin and rosewood. His short champagne-gold hair seemed lifted out of an old European nobleman’s portrait, and his features were fine to the point of excess.

He held a silver fork with intricate engravings, unhurriedly slicing a piece of fine cold ham on his plate.

On his face was his signature social smile, warm and elegant and beyond reproach, like a perfect wax figure.

“Young master, the stadium made quite a fuss tonight.”

The old butler, dressed in a sharp tailcoat, placed a silver tray in front of him. On the tray, the forum was refreshing in real time.

Theodore glanced at the screen.

Xu Zhou was wearing Mateo’s golden No. 7 battle jacket, faint red fingerprints left by Ethan on his neck. In the high-definition close-up, the boy’s eyes were rimmed with red, yet his expression was cold and remote, like a bystander with nothing to do with the scene.

Ding.

The silver fork tapped the porcelain edge, giving off a clear note.

The smile on Theodore’s face vanished in that instant.

The old butler bent slightly, lowering the tray by two centimeters, and even his breathing became especially careful. When the heir to the dukedom stopped smiling, there was nothing left in the air around him except a cold, measuring gaze.

“Disgraceful.”

Theodore drew a silk napkin embroidered with black roses to wipe his fingertips, his tone elegantly sharp. “Reyes is like a stray dog fighting over food, and Gu Yanli and Hawthorne lower themselves to the same level. Over one special admit. Scrambling for him with such dirty tricks. It’s ugly.”

He rose, walked over to the rosewood desk, opened the drawer, and took out the Black Rose Society’s private register for the Golden Terrace dinner.

His fingertip paused on the name Bai Qi in the first column. He picked up a fountain pen and drew a rose symbol next to Bai Qi’s name, marking an adjustment of the seating plan.

Then, in the empty space meant for the seat of honor below, he wrote Xu Zhou’s name stroke by stroke.

“Send the spare invitation for Monday’s dinner to Arden House, P-18.”

Theodore put on another smile, perfect and icy, while a cold calculation churned in his eyes.

‘He wants to be invisible? Fine, I’ll use this register to help him out. Let’s see how well he can keep ducking and running around in the dark once he’s on my list.’

***

At the same time, in a private practice room of St. Lester’s classical music club, a Chopin nocturne was flowing out from under the keys, soft, precise, gentle as a lover’s whisper.

Adrian Sinclair sat at the Steinway grand. He had light chestnut hair with a slight wave, and pale amber eyes that looked extraordinarily gentle in the dim lamplight of the room.

When the last chord faded, he lifted his fair fingers from the keys, tilted his face to one side, and smiled with shallow dimples.

“That’s all for tonight. Everyone worked hard.”

The club members thanked him and left, one after another, faces flushed.

As heir to a global medical technology empire and St. Lester’s top student, Adrian was also known for being good-natured and gentle.

Only after the practice room was completely empty did Adrian take a small, delicate pill case from his suit jacket pocket. He shook out a mint, put it in his mouth, then leisurely opened his phone.

The screen showed an image of Xu Zhou in the VIP passage, cornered by three people, his face wearing a single unmistakable expression: I want to leave.

Adrian looked at the eyes in the photo, tinged red at the edges but full of impatience. The smile on his lips did not disappear. Instead, it deepened, as did the dimples.

“Really… President Gu and the others are too rough.”

Adrian sighed gently, ran a fingertip across the boy’s cool cheek on the screen, and said, “Push the kitten so hard, and it will run away.”

In the next moment, the warmth on his face withdrew completely.

It looked as though the gentle, kindly mask had been ripped off, revealing the calculating, cold stare underneath.

He knew Xu Zhou.

Xu Zhou was a salted fish, someone who only wanted a quiet life. Even when someone handed him a step up, he would suspect a trap was hidden underneath.

So Adrian would not try to grab him. He would not shout and rage on a field like Reyes.

He picked up the landline and dialed the school medical office. His voice was still as warm and thoughtful as ever.

– Dr. Lawrence, next Monday’s enrollment physical for special admit Xu Zhou, please schedule him for two in the afternoon. All the medical fees can be charged to the Sinclair Foundation.

After hanging up, Adrian opened a score book filled with notes.

In red pen, he connected all the dots of Xu Zhou’s Monday: the routes between classes, the time of the physical, the location of Adrian’s own medical lecture. The line he drew formed the least troublesome path, and the one Xu Zhou absolutely could not avoid.

As long as Xu Zhou tried to take a shortcut to avoid trouble, he would walk obediently into the trap Adrian had laid.

“Monday, I’ll be picking you up on the way, junior.”

Adrian smiled and closed the score book filled with annotations.

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