Sweating profusely, little bro?
Wunnuan kept her head down, making it impossible to tell what she was thinking. Seeing Wunnuan state twice that Ji Feng hadn't bullied her, Huang Jihai didn't know what else to say at this point. He could only wave his hand dismissively:
"All right, get back inside for morning reading."
"Okay." Wunnuan nodded.
"Everything settled? Then I'm off, Old Huang..."
"What did you just call me?"
Before Huang Jihai could demand an explanation, Ji Feng had already bolted away in a flash of smoke.
Out in the hallway, Ji Feng quietly followed behind Wunnuan:
"Wunnuan, thanks!"
"Save it."
Wunnuan remained her usual self. Whether during their morning run or right now, she had retreated entirely into her keep-away-from-strangers mode. With that aura of keeping everyone a thousand miles away, she didn't even need to make a gesture for people to naturally steer clear of her.
Back in the classroom, Ji Feng spotted the cold steamed bun and salted vegetables sitting on Wunnuan's desk. In his memory, she seemed to have always eaten breakfast like this, though Ji Feng hadn't paid much attention to it in the past. He glanced at the still-warm steamed buns and egg soup on his own desk, looked up for a moment, and then quickly placed them on Wunnuan's desk.
"Steamed buns, and egg soup." Ji Feng pointed at the food, put his hands behind his back, and looked away.
Wunnuan gave him a strange look:
"I don't need this."
"I still haven't apologized to you for what happened yesterday, and I bought too much breakfast anyway. Why don't you try something different? It'd be a waste to throw it away, and it's free—help yourself."
Gu Xueting, who had been secretly keeping an eye on Ji Feng all along, completely lost her composure upon hearing the word "free." She immediately stood up:
"Ji Feng! What are you doing?"
Ji Feng turned back to look at Gu Xueting, muttered "idiot" under his breath, and then turned his attention back to Wunnuan. Seeing that she still wore that cold expression, Ji Feng's temper flared up as well. Since the soft approach clearly wasn't working, it was time to play hardball:
"Steamed buns? Not eating? Are you trying to make me lose face, Ji Feng? Come on, if you don't eat these today, don't leave after school this evening."
Wunnuan turned her head to look out the window, still ignoring Ji Feng, though her hand—initially reaching for the cold steamed bun—swerved halfway toward the warm one. She then began to eat it in tiny, delicate bites.
Every move the two of them made was witnessed by their classmates. In high school, gossip among students could be even more absurd than in a future corporate office—a fact Ji Feng knew all too well. Seeing Wunnuan eating the bun handed to her by Ji Feng, people immediately started whispering among themselves.
"Hey, did something happen between Wunnuan and Ji Feng last night?"
"What happened last night definitely wasn't simple, oh."
"No way?"
"You think..."
The one stirring the pot was Liu Wei, the instigator from earlier. Looking at Ji Feng suddenly standing right in front of him, this nominal lackey felt a chill run down his spine.
"It's not even hot out, Liu Wei. Why are you sweating so much?"
"Uh, Brother Feng."
"Your Brother Feng is going to study hard now, so keep your nose out of this kind of crap from now on, or else..."
Ji Feng clenched his fist right in front of Liu Wei, leaving Liu Wei to lower his head with shifting, evasive eyes. In truth, Ji Feng knew that Liu Wei had a crush on Wunnuan. But in Wunnuan's eyes, there had never been any room for Liu Wei—not even for a fraction of a second. Consequently, Liu Wei's kind of liking was a bit warped, deeply distorted.
Instigating Ji Feng to corner Wunnuan last night, and spreading rumors and smearing her name today, were both manifestations of his twisted affection. Wunnuan was simply too high above Liu Wei, too pure and untainted by mortal affairs. It seemed that only by dragging her down into the dirt, letting her fall into the mortal dust, could he swoop in as a savior and maybe, just maybe, stand a chance.
The old Ji Feng wouldn't have seen through any of this, but the current Ji Feng could be summed up in three words: eyes like torches!
Returning to his seat, Ji Feng actually began flipping through his textbooks and notes. Seeing the scattered, messy doodles, random sketches, and scrawled words even he couldn't decipher, Ji Feng let out a sigh:
"Alas, I suppose I've truly gone mad. Try as I might, these books just won't sink in, and the words on these pages whisper like evil spirits trying to corrupt my mind. Looking at this book stirs up an inexplicable complexity in my mood, a sadness born of nowhere. Every time I see the test scores tucked inside, I lose the strength to do anything at all. High school has only two possible endings—one is the gaokao, and the other is also the gaokao. Oh well, better get to reading."
Ji Feng's standards for himself weren't actually low. Not to mention getting into some top-tier university, but living a second life, the least he could do was get into a Tier 1 institution! Unfortunately, he hadn't awakened any sort of divine study system.
With a clear goal in mind, Ji Feng gritted his teeth and studied hard all morning. By noon, having gone without such high-intensity studying for a long time, he felt dizzy and somewhat out of it. Rubbing his temples, Ji Feng groggily dragged himself to the cafeteria. He casually found a spot to sit and pressed the bridge of his nose to soothe his overloaded brain, which felt on the verge of crashing.
"Senior year... really is agonizing."
Clatter!
The sound of a food tray landing interrupted Ji Feng's thoughts. He stared blankly at what was in front of him.
Huh?
A serving of chicken leg rice?
He looked up. A blue school uniform was seated diagonally across from him.
This meal... did Wunnuan buy it for him?
"Wunnuan, what are you doing?"
"Paying you back for the morning bun," Wunnuan said coldly. She didn't raise her head; Ji Feng didn't even see her lips move.
He looked down at the chicken leg on the tray, then looked across at her tray, which contained only plain white rice. After a brief pause, Ji Feng's tone abruptly shifted:
"A man of honor does not accept food handed out in contempt! Besides, who does this lord think he is? Do I need you to treat me? Don't bother me, take it back."
"If you won't eat it, you can throw it away."
Wunnuan's voice remained as cold as ever, but Ji Feng wasn't about to fall for that routine.
"Throw it away? *'Every grain on the plate comes from hard toil'*—even a primary school student knows that, don't you? How did you even study?"
With that, Ji Feng directly yanked Wunnuan's tray over and shoved his own chicken leg rice across to her. Then he pointed his index finger at her as a warning:
"Let me tell you, stop bugging me!"
Glancing at the fierce-looking Ji Feng, Wunnuan merely looked at the tray in front of him and lowered her head once more. That was the one she had already eaten from...
"Brother Feng, Brother Feng, soda."
"Brother Feng, here's your braised pork ribs."
"Brother Feng, skewers, big gluten sticks—all takeout from outside. Brother Feng, are we going out to grind some ranked matches tonight? Haven't played in a few days."
Right on cue, Ji Feng's usual lackey crew swarmed over in a pack. Seeing these guys, Wunnuan quietly scooted a little further away without a word.
Though the henchmen found it a bit strange that Ji Feng was sitting diagonally across from Wunnuan—the very girl he had cornered just yesterday—they couldn't be bothered to ask. As long as Brother Feng wasn't simping over Gu Xueting, everything else required no explanation.
Leaning against the table with the air of an elder brother, Ji Feng nodded to Dou Ding, the most sensible lackey among them:
"Fine. Since I've decided to quit playing around anyway, we might as well have a good few rounds of fun tonight."
Hearing Ji Feng say he was going to quit playing, the group of lackey boys froze in place. Dou Ding immediately panicked:
"Don't joke around, Brother Feng. How can you just stop playing? We can't do without you."
Dou Ding was the most devoted lackey from his past life, sticking by his side through thick and thin without ever abandoning him. Ji Feng wasn't saintly, but he lived by the code: *You never fail me, I'll never fail you.* If Qi Tongwei's village dogs could become police dogs, then as for brothers, he'd pull them up wherever he could.
So Ji Feng patted the six-foot-plus Dou Ding, motioning for him to sit down beside him, and began offering some guidance:
"Douding, I think rotting away in school all day is completely pointless. Instead of doing that, you might as well stay home and stroke it a few times—at least you'd get some actual pleasure out of it."