Chapter 9: Ice Water in His Veins

'School's started, settle your minds down.'

On the podium, homeroom teacher Cheng Yong stood behind the lectern, his teal stand-collar T-shirt visible, his expression gentle.

'Last year, when you were in eleventh grade, the biggest hurdle was the final exam. This year, you're seniors now, and the last test you have to face is—' He picked up a piece of chalk, turned to the blackboard, and wrote two bold characters with a sharp swish: 'the gaokao.'

'A lot of people say the college entrance exam is an important turning point in life. I don't agree. I think the gaokao is the starting point of your lives.'

'In the future, what industry you'll work in, what kind of job you'll have, how much money you'll make, what friends you'll meet, and even what kind of person you'll date, and whether you'll marry and have children, all of it is closely tied to your gaokao results.' When the students down below heard the words 'date someone,' they burst into a noisy fit of laughter. Cheng Yong smiled with them, then let his gaze rest on a pair of students in the third row and went on:

'I know some of you are in relationships.'

The two students immediately shrank their necks, the girl's head dropping even lower.

'I don't support early dating, because your minds aren't mature enough yet, and it's easy for you to do things that you'll regret later, things your families will regret too.' He looked away and swept his gaze across the whole class. 'But I don't oppose it either, because this is one of the best experiences you can have at this age, when you're still young and confused.'

'Of course, if the school leadership catches you, remember to say I didn't know about it.' The class laughed again.

Cheng Yong waited for the laughter to die down, then continued. 'My bottom line is simple: don't let it affect your studies.'

'Grades!' He wrote the word on the blackboard again, then drew an arrow pointing to the big words he had written before, the strokes strong and forceful. 'This is the thing you have to put first this year; everything else has to come after it!' After saying that, his voice softened again. 'During last year's exam, a few of you slipped a lot in your rankings.'

Cheng Yong glanced at Xiaowei, making his heart give a jolt. 'Whatever the reason, I hope all of you can get back to where you belong this year, and then break through from there.'

'You were able to do it once, which means you have that ability, that talent.'

'And wasting talent is the most shameful thing in the world!'

A burst of whispering rose from below. A few students whose grades had been mediocre last year kept ducking their heads while the worthless little jabs from their friends poked at them.

Xiaowei also disgustedly brushed away Fatty's greasy fingers. After all, among the boys in the dorm, only he had done well in school, and naturally, his fall from grace had been the most obvious.

'Students!'

Cheng Yong suddenly straightened up, a flush rising over his face. 'I want to tell all of you this: as long as I haven't given up, I will never allow any of you to give up on yourselves!'

His expression was stern, his voice ringing out like a hammer strike. 'I'll work hard together with all of you and swallow this final bitter pill!'

'If there's something you don't understand or can't do, go ask your subject teachers! If you're embarrassed, or if they don't want to teach you, come find me and I'll go ask for you!'

The entire classroom fell silent, and only those forceful words kept echoing through the room.

It took a full three minutes before the rigid expression on Cheng Yong's face finally relaxed. 'All right, today's brainwashing session ends here.'

'You haven't seen each other for a month. You've probably got a bellyful of things to say, right?' With a smile, he continued, 'I'll give you some time to catch up.'

'And the limit is...' He raised his arm and glanced at his watch. 'Ten minutes!' With that, he walked straight out of the classroom and pulled the door closed behind him.

The moment the classroom door shut, the students exploded into noise.

'Fuck! Old Cheng is still as handsome as ever!'

Fatty leaned his heavy head close to Xiaowei and sighed.

Old Cheng wasn't old at all; he was only in his early thirties. With his fairly decent features, he actually looked more like he was in his twenties. It was just that he had a crew cut that didn't suit him very well, or he'd count as a real looker.

'If he can be Wang's homeroom teacher, how could he be an ordinary man?' Xiaowei said coolly.

At that moment, Glasses, who was sitting in front, turned around and said mysteriously, 'I heard Old Cheng's father-in-law is a leader in the education bureau.'

It was only the first night back at school. Although the school required everyone to attend evening study hall, tomorrow was the official first day of classes, so everyone was still sitting wherever they wanted. Naturally, the four troublemakers had ended up together.

'And he still can't get a senior title every year?' Fatty asked, staring.

Ordinary students naturally didn't care about these things, but their dorm had Glasses, their battlefield reporter.

This guy had no idea where he got his information, but he could pull out all kinds of gossip at a moment's notice. After a long time, the other three troublemakers had all become a little nosy too.

As it turned out, no one didn't love a good story, especially when it involved people they knew.

'You don't know shit! Titles at school are all quota-based. There are only so many slots!' Once the conversation turned professional, Glasses spoke with great confidence.

'Even if he's the leader's son-in-law, it's still that hard to make room for him?' Xiaowei said, growing curious too.

'Because the father-in-law retired!'

Smack!

Cannon slapped Glasses on the back of the head, nearly knocking his black-rimmed bottle-bottom glasses off his face. 'Say the whole thing at once, will you? What the hell's with that bad habit?'

Glasses didn't get angry. He pushed his frames back up and grinned. That same mysterious look returned to his face.

'I also heard Old Cheng is a live-in son-in-law, and the teacher's wife is one of our school's teachers too!' Seeing Cannon's unfriendly stare, he hurriedly explained, 'I'm not dragging it out! I really don't know who she is!'

'Go dig deeper!' Cannon waved a hand.

...

The afternoon shower had lasted less than an hour, but it still knocked some of the summer heat out of the air. It didn't feel like much while the sun was out, but by nightfall you could feel a refreshing coolness in the breeze.

After evening self-study, the four troublemakers walked back to the dorm laughing all the way. After getting the odds and ends they needed for class tomorrow and rushing through a quick wash-up, they finally gathered in the room. Like agents meeting face to face, they lowered their brows, looked at one another, and gave a slight nod.

On the way back earlier, Fatty had quietly told the three of them that besides the porn filling up his phone storage, he had also prepared another surprise.

For something to be called a surprise by a perennially sleazy bastard like Fatty, and for him to keep it bottled up until night before saying even a little bit, just thinking about it made their skin itch.

But the bastard refused to say any more no matter what. Even when Cannon tried to force the issue, he insisted they had to wait until they were back in the dorm and the lights were off before he would take it out, dragging his brothers' curiosity to the breaking point.

'All right yet?'

'Hold on!'

Fatty took two steps, locked the dorm door from the inside, and muttered, 'If a secret isn't kept, disaster follows.'

'Don't let anyone catch you!'

He was unusually cautious, utterly unlike his usual carefree self. He walked lightly to the suitcase, took out a pure-white object shaped like a thermos, and placed it in his hands.

The top of the cup had three raised buttons, with tiny printed words beside them that were hard to make out. A section of pink gel-like material protruded from the bottom, while a few smooth black lines were set into the body, giving it a minimalist, high-tech look.

'Extreme-shock vibrating fleshlight!'

Holding the base with one hand and the body with the other, Fatty waved it in front of his troublemaking friends with obvious pride and introduced it.

'Fuck!' Even Cannon couldn't keep it in.

'You da man, Fatty!' Through the thick lenses of his glasses, Glasses' eyes were practically shooting sparks.

Xiaowei, though, spotted the blind spot. 'Where's the package? You've already used it, haven't you?'

'I've put it out there for all of you to share, and you're worried about cleanliness?' Fatty cursed, sounding offended.

When Xiaowei heard the words 'fleshlight' and 'share,' a strange feeling suddenly rose in his chest, and for a moment he didn't know what to say.

'How about it? You guys gonna use it or not?'

Seeing Xiaowei stay silent, Fatty looked at the other two and urged them on.

Glasses naturally had no psychological burden and agreed first. Cannon hesitated for a few seconds too, then nodded.

Xiaowei watched as Fatty expertly squeezed some lubricant into the fleshlight, then saw Glasses strip off the clothes on his lower body and impatiently shove his jet-black cock inside. A warm rush went through Xiaowei.

He had already tasted Mom's cunt, but he still didn't know what a real fleshlight felt like. Add in how long he'd been abstinent, and before he knew it, his cock had quietly hardened.

'Well... I'll try it too.'

He rubbed his nose and said it softly.

Fatty shot Xiaowei a grin, then turned back and pressed down on Glasses, who had already started pumping away at the fleshlight. 'That's not how you use this thing.'

After saying that, he pressed the topmost round button.

A ring of blue light lit up, and the fleshlight gave off a low electric hum, beginning to writhe back and forth.

Before the flushed Glasses could even get used to it, Fatty immediately pressed the second button.

The instant the second ring of blue light appeared, the fleshlight started buzzing and trembling. Combined with the motion from before, it made Glasses gasp sharply.

By the time Fatty pressed the third button, a ring of glaring red light began to flash, and the fleshlight seemed to enter overload mode. Its writhing and trembling sped up by at least double. In just over ten seconds, Glasses gave a strangled cry and unloaded in a torrent.

'Fuck!' Fatty didn't bother with the roommate who had fallen into self-doubt. He shut the fleshlight off with another press, yanked it out from between the skinny legs, and handed it to Cannon.

And Cannon, out of a man's last shred of dignity in the dorm, lifted his chin toward Xiaowei. 'You go first.'

Xiaowei didn't refuse. He just frowned at the streak of whitish sludge that had spilled from the cup opening and felt a little disgusted.

'Get me some paper,' he said to Fatty.

'We're brothers, what's there to be picky about?' Fatty said, and he had a point, but Xiaowei still walked over to the desk, pulled off a tissue, wiped the semen from where he could see it, and only then, enduring the discomfort in his chest, stiffened his cock and slowly pushed it into the fleshlight.

'At least clean the outside properly,' he tossed back casually.

The next instant, the sensation from below stole his full attention.

Slippery, tight, but lacking the moisture and liveliness of a real cunt.

The leftover semen gave the inside a hint of warmth, but it still fell far short of Mom's hot, wet hole.

The biggest difference was that the end of Mom's tunnel was a flesh ring shaped like a little mouth, while the top of the fleshlight was a piece of silicone that mixed softness with firmness.

His glans seemed to sink into a patch of softness, while countless tiny bumps pressed against the surface, giving his cock a strangely different kind of stimulation.

Xiaowei felt it quietly for a few seconds, then before Fatty even had a chance to act, he pressed the first button himself.

The fleshlight immediately came alive. The soft sleeve around his cock gradually tightened, while the inside split into several sections that alternated between soft and hard. It felt as if he had shoved himself into a constantly twisting snake, the rhythmic squeezing almost snapping his cock in half, only to relax just before it reached the limit and massage the whole shaft just right.

It was comfortable enough, but it was nowhere near Mom.

Xiaowei gave the sensation a quick evaluation in his mind, then pressed the second button.

'Hiss!'

As the fleshlight began to shake, he reacted just like Glasses had, his lower body tightening as he sucked in a sharp breath.

The massage and the vibration brought two completely different kinds of pleasure, yet somehow merged together into a new kind of intense bliss.

Especially when his cock was bent to its limit, the vibration felt even stronger, and waves of numb pleasure shot all the way up to his lower back, raising goosebumps all over Xiaowei's spine.

The most deadly part was that the top suddenly started rotating. Countless little bumps scraped across the surface of his glans, releasing a tide of acid-hot soreness that seemed to have no end.

It wasn't exactly comfortable, and it even hurt a little, but strangely enough, under that fierce ache his cock only swelled harder, while a trace of urgency to pee began to rise.

Xiaowei bared his teeth, endured the odd feeling below, and without hesitation pressed the third button.

In an instant, the amplified stimulation wrapped around his lower body.

The high-frequency massage and vibration seemed to make even the sack below tremble. His glans was rubbed again and again by the wildly spinning silicone bumps. Even with plenty of lubricant, he still felt as if a ball of fire had been lit under him, a fire that wanted to burn from the head all the way down to the root.

He thought, I have to cum as fast as possible to end this torture.

Still, relying on the stamina he'd built up over summer vacation, he forced himself to hold on for more than three minutes.

A man's pride is sometimes more important than anything else.

'Not bad, Wei!' Fatty was clearly shocked by Xiaowei's staying power.

'Tch, I'm just off my game today.' Xiaowei ignored the resentful look Glasses was shooting him from the side and waved a hand coolly.

He did think Fatty's fleshlight was pretty damn good. Especially when he came, the pleasure mixed with the soreness from the glans being scraped raw, giving him a kind of sour-bliss he'd never felt before. But compared with Mom's cunt, it still felt like something was missing.

It wasn't until Cannon, not caring about the semen from the two before him, shoved his cock straight in and turned on the overload mode, offering his own verdict amid the flashing red light, that Xiaowei finally understood.

'Well... compared to a real pussy, there's no real interaction. It's like... it's just made for cumming.' Exactly! That was it!

Xiaowei raised both hands, almost wanting to applaud Cannon, but when he saw that giant dragon still hanging nearly half exposed, he silently gave up.

Come to think of it, under Fatty's instigation, the four troublemakers had once used a ruler to measure their own equipment exactly.

The result had left Xiaowei pretty deflated.

He didn't know if their dorm had some extraordinary natural talent or what, but although his size wasn't exactly short, it could only rank third among the four of them.

Only Glasses' jet-black cock was a little shorter than his at 12 centimeters. Among the other two, even Fatty's thick belly hid a 15-centimeter root of flesh, let alone Cannon.

Put it this way: before that measuring game, Cannon's nickname had been Big Strong.

His dusky 20-centimeter cock had a bulge even larger through the middle, with the ends slightly thinner and the middle huge and thick, looking like a dragon suffering from a tumor. Just one glance at that meat pole, and at the man attached to it, was enough to make anyone recoil.

'What the hell is that? My dad's cock is the real monster!' Cannon had shouted while shaking that dragon around in memory.

'How monster-level are we talking?'

'You know what a beaded cock is?'

...

'Hello, Mom.'

'You little bastard finally decided to call your old lady?'

School had already been in session for a week, and this was still the first call Xiaowei had made to Mom. There were two reasons for that, one he could say aloud, and the other was a little hard to admit.

Maybe the indulgence of that night had made his desire rise again. Or maybe he had been planning this all along.

Last night, after all his roommates had fallen asleep, he had quietly picked up his backpack, slipped into the bathroom, taken out that bizarre-looking fleshlight, and fucked it hard.

Only after he had gotten off did he belatedly feel a little uneasy, so he decided to call Mom the next day and sound her out.

Luckily, her voice on the other end didn't sound strange at all, which let him relax, and his own words started coming more naturally too.

'My phone has low battery for at least twenty hours a day...' Xiaowei said with a tone full of grievance, starting to complain about the reason.

The shitty charger Mom had given him could only charge the phone to twenty percent overnight, and even that was fake! Turn the screen on for a little while and the battery would drop like a countdown, just whooshing down.

'Hm... uh, I'll look for it again in a bit...'

'You haven't even looked for my charger at all these past few days, have you?'

'How could I not!?' Yang Yimin's voice came back sharp but shaky. 'What kind of image do you think I have in your head?'

'Lazy pig.' Xiaowei answered without hesitation.

'Dead pig!'

'Lazy pig!'

...

'Mom, these past few days, you haven't had another episode, have you?'

After arguing back and forth for quite a while, Xiaowei finally asked the question that had been stuck in his chest.

'Pah, rip that jinxed mouth of yours to shreds! Your mother's fine!' Her voice, as lively as ever, didn't carry the slightest hint of anything unusual. If it weren't for the fact that last night the flesh in that wet, slick cunt still trembled while sucking his cock, Xiaowei would have thought it was simply his fleshlight, separated by too much distance, that had lost contact with that pretty woman.

After hanging up, Xiaowei let out a long breath, and the stone in his heart finally fell away.

No matter what reason Mom had for choosing to hide the truth, at the very least, for now the chances of him being exposed had shrunk to almost nothing.

That meant that from now on he could use the fleshlight however he wanted to vent his excess desire, with no more worries at all.

...

'Ah... ah...'

A string of filthy moans poured out of the mobile phone lying sideways on the desk.

Four silhouettes of varying height and build, bare-chested, stood around it in a semicircle, staring at the screen without blinking.

Inside the screen, a thick cock was flying in and out of a dark-red cunt, dragging out strings of slick with every thrust and making the four onlookers breathe heavier and heavier.

Thanks to Fatty's month of diligent collecting, the dorm put on this fixed show every night these days.

Of course, the matching part was that the iron dorm door was locked from the inside every night too.

'Wei, not gonna take a round?'

Fatty let out a satisfied sigh, pulled the still-buzzing white fleshlight out from under him, and asked Xiaowei.

Xiaowei pressed at the cock already standing hard between his thighs and shook his head through clenched teeth.

'What a weirdo!' Fatty clicked his tongue and casually handed the fleshlight to Glasses on the other side.

In his eyes, Xiaowei's refusal every night was because of some kind of cleanliness fetish. How could he have imagined that this bastard was actually unwilling to waste semen?

By the time the movie ended, it was nearly midnight. After everyone finished cleaning up the battlefield, Fatty sneaked out to wash the fleshlight and bring it back, and another half hour had gone by.

The exhausted troublemakers called out to each other, climbed into bed, and soon all sank into deep sleep.

The different rhythms of their breathing gradually lengthened, with the faint sound of snoring mixed in.

Xiaowei waited patiently for another dozen minutes before slowly getting up. He glanced toward his roommates' beds, climbed down, took his backpack from the storage cabinet, and with careful movements opened the door and slipped out.

There was no private bathroom in the dorm, so if he wanted to use the toilet, he had to go to the public restroom at the end of the floor.

He'd heard that after the new teaching building was finished, the school was planning to build several new dormitories, and each room would be assigned its own bathroom then, but that clearly had nothing to do with this year's seniors.

'Mom, asleep yet?'

Inside a toilet stall, Xiaowei opened WeChat and sent Mom a message.

A person's courage grows with repeated testing. After several days of apparent safety while masturbating, Xiaowei had once again started missing the days when he was still at home, listening to Mom's moans through a closed door.

Just a few seconds later, a reply came back.

'No.'

Followed immediately by another: 'What time is it already? Why aren't you asleep?' Xiaowei's lips curved slightly. He took the fleshlight out of his backpack and looked at the flushed little bit of soft flesh at the opening. Leaning closer, he gave it a gentle sniff.

All he could smell was the nauseating stench of the toilet, but he still distinctly caught a certain obscene scent. His lower body gradually stiffened, pushing his pants out into a small tent.

He called Mom on a voice call right away, but after ringing a few times, it was mercilessly hung up on him.

"What is it?"

Mom typed.

After several nights of late-night fucking, the woman seemed to have found some kind of pattern and actually didn’t dare take her son’s call at a time like this.

Xiaowei looked at the words "the other party declined" on the screen and felt a little irritated. He casually sent back, "I’m on the toilet," then set the phone down and started licking at Mom’s pussy.

It wasn’t until a gush of slick spilled out of the slit and he braced the shaft at the entrance, preparing to shove in, that a new message came through:

"Why are you calling while you’re on the toilet!"

This woman was always so stubborn.

But compared to hearing her voice directly, fucking Mom through a screen like this seemed to have a unique flavor all its own.

Xiaowei grinned, his hand tightening as he drove the fleshlight all the way down and fucked it hard in big, savage strokes. With his other hand, he typed leisurely, "What are you doing?"

He waited a long time, but no new reply came. Still, his excitement only grew, and he was already imagining Mom being fucked senseless by him.

The slick nearly soaking through his balls was proof enough.

He deliberately stopped stroking, then, once he saw "the other party is typing," suddenly slammed in violently, using the motion to interrupt Mom.

In the blank stretch of time with no messages coming in, and in the slutty flesh wrapped tightly around his cock, he could sense the reality on the other side and draw from it the pleasure of controlling his mother’s body.

Sometimes still, sometimes thrusting wildly, the phone suddenly lit up, and a new unread message was painfully displayed:

"Watch the show."

When Xiaowei saw the typo on the screen, he nearly laughed himself silly.

At that very moment, a low-battery warning popped up, freezing his expression.

These past few days he’d only cared about getting off down below, and his phone had suffered for it. A little thought was enough to tell him that after the strange illness flared up again, and before Mom could be sure she wouldn’t have an attack during the day, there was no way she’d go out.

"Remember to find my charger!"

Xiaowei intentionally sent that back before putting the phone away and devoting himself to pumping the fleshlight.

A thick sheen of lewd juice coated his lower body, making it shine as white reflections flickered along it with every thrust.

Layer upon layer of slutty flesh clung tightly to his cock, but because it was so slick it couldn’t stop him, only increase the pleasure and make the fucking even more satisfying.

The little mouth at the end of the channel gradually softened under the relentless pounding, and the glans could already force in a little, enjoying that gentle sucking sensation.

With every full-depth thrust, the fleshlight bucked with little bulges, then returned to normal the instant his cock withdrew.

The slick turned into a milky white under the furious pumping. As the fleshlight was pulled and stretched between deformation and recovery, Xiaowei panted hard, feeling like he was close to his limit, when a flash of understanding suddenly crossed his mind.

The fleshlight was Mom’s cunt. Though he had never confirmed it with his own eyes, he believed it without question.

Since he had the chance to toy with his mother’s cunt in his hands, of course he wasn’t going to miss the chance to observe and study it.

Added to that were Big Cannon’s selfless lessons over the past few days, and all at once Xiaowei reached a conclusion about a suspicion he’d hidden in his heart for a long time.

The fleshlight was twelve centimeters long. Maybe that was the length of the passage inside Mom’s pussy. And that tiny mouth at the top, sucking at his glans, had to be the legendary cervix.

His cock was stabbing the place where he had been born again and again.

That realization sent Xiaowei into a frenzy. He attacked that little mouth even harder, almost wishing he could pierce straight through Mom’s womb and return to the sacred place that had nurtured him.

Unfortunately, his own length wasn’t enough. No matter how hard he tried, all he could do was fuck the cunt until it sprayed waves of juice, never getting any closer to the deeper secrets hidden inside that body.

Xiaowei suddenly felt a little envious of the monstrous dragon between Big Cannon’s legs. Even Fatty’s size would be fine; if that could be handed over to him, the pleasure he could get would surely be even more dreamlike.

And in that case, Mom would probably go crazy with pleasure too...

In the dormitory.

Fatty’s snoring was interrupted by the system notification on the phone beside his head. The screen suddenly lit up, casting a white beam over his broad face and making him furrow his brows.

"Fuck."

He opened his sleepy eyes, picked up the phone, and saw the low-storage warning on the screen. He muttered a curse in a low voice.

Ignoring the notification, Fatty turned the screen off, set the phone to silent, and was about to roll over and keep sleeping when his gaze accidentally drifted across the empty bed opposite him and froze.

Almost at the same time, the tin door was gently pushed open, and a figure slipped in through the crack.

In the dim light, Xiaowei silently made his way to the storage cabinet, put his backpack inside, and tiptoed back to bed.

He stripped off his clothes, lay down, and pressed his phone again, but got no response at all. The battery was so weak the phone had apparently shut off at some point without him noticing.

Xiaowei sighed, plugged the phone in to charge, then stared blankly at the pitch-black bedboard overhead for a while before closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep, completely unaware that on the bed opposite him, a pair of half-open mouse-like eyes had taken in every one of his movements.

...

"I know already! You're so annoying!"

The next morning during self-study, Xiaowei kept taking out his phone every so often to sneak a look, until he had savored every punctuation mark in the message before finally lifting his head with a stupid grin.

That had been Mom’s last reply from the night before. Because his phone had shut off, he hadn’t received it in time, and now he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He even brought his phone to class, just to carefully mull over what Mom had been feeling at the time.

The school had a clear rule forbidding students from bringing phones, but everyone knew the ban was just there for show. It didn’t need to be taken seriously.

As long as you weren’t caught red-handed, most teachers would close one eye and leave it alone.

Xiaowei had always behaved well and normally only kept his phone in the dorm, but today he was acting completely out of character.

Luckily, the teacher on the platform was busy grading homework and didn’t notice his audacious behavior. But a few rows behind him, Fatty kept watching him, his face full of thought as he stared at Xiaowei’s strange behavior.

At last, after seeing Xiaowei once again sneaking his head down under the desk like a pervert, Fatty pursed his lips and took out his phone from his pocket. Aside from Xiaowei, the other three roommates always kept their phones on them.

Fatty opened WeChat, selected Big Cannon and Eyeglasses, and pulled them into a new group chat, then typed: "I think I discovered a secret!"

That one line kicked up a storm. The little group instantly came alive.

The three of them discussed everything, from Xiaowei’s sneaking around late last night to his abnormal behavior during morning self-study, and eventually arrived at a startling conclusion:

This fucking bastard had definitely started dating someone!

There had to be a love letter from a girl hidden in his backpack!

Otherwise how could he explain sneaking out in the middle of the night to make a call while carrying a backpack?

It couldn’t be that he was secretly jerking off by using the motion-sensing light in the toilet, could it?

Xiaowei suddenly sneezed loudly, drawing a sharp look from the teacher on the platform. He immediately steadied himself and pretended to start studying.

The whole morning passed in familiar boredom. The moment the class bell rang, the math teacher, who was still writing on the board, skillfully turned around and raised a hand to press everyone down. "I’ll talk for two more minutes." Xiaowei quietly rolled his eyes and had to sit through another ten-odd minutes before he finally heard the announcement that class was over.

Just as he stood up, Homeroom Teacher Cheng Yong appeared at the door again. "Wang Zhiwei, come with me for a moment!" Xiaowei froze on the spot, then hurriedly agreed and jogged to the classroom door, following Old Cheng out.

And the second he left the classroom, Fatty slowly lifted his head and exchanged a look with the other two roommates who had looked over at the same time. A deep crease formed on his meat-packed cheeks.

...

Xiaowei strolled across campus with the homeroom teacher, his eyes occasionally flicking toward the thick forearm at Cheng Yong’s side, which was gently swinging as he walked.

Although Old Cheng treated the students in the class very kindly, and Xiaowei was quite close to him as a teacher, if they were standing among a group of classmates, Xiaowei might even joke around with him. But when the two were alone, the distance between teacher and student felt suddenly more obvious, and Xiaowei found it hard to look directly at that face.

The two of them walked on in silence. Cheng Yong seemed to be thinking about something, while Xiaowei simply didn’t know how to start speaking.

He guessed Old Cheng had called him over mostly to talk about studies, but he hadn’t asked right away. By the time he wanted to ask later, he could no longer find the right opening, so he could only fall into deeper silence, uneasy and waiting for the other man to speak first.

They walked like that for a while before Cheng Yong suddenly stopped, lifted his head, and looked up. "It’s almost finished. Maybe next semester we’ll have to move classrooms again."

Xiaowei looked over and realized they had already reached the construction site for the new teaching building.

Inside the two-meter-high green barricade stood a pale gray high-rise. Its walls were studded with countless openings waiting for glass to be installed, dark and deep, like hollow eye sockets gouged out until only bone remained exposed.

It’s only been a month and it’s already topped out?

Xiaowei thought in surprise, but like an illiterate suddenly dragged up a steep peak, he stood there dazed for a long moment before finally squeezing out, "So fast."

"Money talks. The school isn’t short on funds," Cheng Yong said lightly, shaking his head before striding on.

Xiaowei seized the chance and hurriedly asked, "Teacher Cheng, you wanted to see me for...?"

Just then, his phone in his pants pocket suddenly buzzed, as if someone had sent him a message.

Not even a second later, Cheng Yong’s calm but unmistakably firm voice came as well: "Let’s keep walking. I’ll tell you when we get there."

Xiaowei glanced at his homeroom teacher, hesitated for a few seconds, and then followed along step by step.

They kept walking until they reached the staff cafeteria. Cheng Yong took Xiaowei to an empty seat, bought them both a meal, and only then said, "What dishes do you want?"

"I... anything is fine."

Xiaowei was clearly a little stiff.

Cheng Yong smiled softly and didn’t ask any more. He just went to the window for a round, and when he came back he was holding two dishes.

One was a plate of vegetables, green and fresh. The other was a meat dish, fragrant enough to make the mouth water.

"These are enough. Anything more would be wasteful."

He pushed the two dishes to the center of the table and sat down opposite Xiaowei.

The staff meals were far better than the students’ by more than a single grade. Xiaowei was practically salivating, but he still held back the urge to start eating and looked at the cropped hair on the top of the homeroom teacher’s head.

"Have you been running into any problems with your studies lately?"

Cheng Yong picked up a green vegetable and put it in his mouth, gesturing for Xiaowei to eat as he chewed.

"Mm... no."

Xiaowei answered with a little shame.

These days he was sleeping even later than before, dozing off often during the day, his mind packed full of messy sex between men and women. There wasn’t room in there for studying at all, so naturally he wasn’t having any difficulties.

"What about next month’s mock exam? Can you get back to your original rank?"

"Uh..."

"Hmm?"

Cheng Yong looked at the hesitant, struggling expression on Xiaowei’s face and frowned with displeasure.

He opened his mouth, just about to say something, when his pocket suddenly rang.

Cheng Yong took out his phone, saw the caller ID on the screen, and frowned. After taking a deep breath, he answered.

"Hello."

"I know."

"I’m eating with a student. Can this wait a bit?" His brows kept tightening until a deep vertical crease formed between them.

"I’m busy right now!"

Cheng Yong suddenly shouted in a low voice. The next second, the voice on the other end of the call also shot up sharply, and a shrill woman’s voice came through, forcing him to cover the receiver with his hand.

Xiaowei jumped. After giving his teacher a look of apology, Cheng Yong stood up and walked off to the side with one hand over the phone.

"Marrying into the family," "slave," "human dignity" - those three words drifted into Xiaowei’s ears, squeezed between the blurred sentences, while the rest of the conversation became impossible to make out as the distance increased.

Old Cheng is arguing with the hostess?

Looks like the couple doesn’t get along very well...

At that moment, Xiaowei finally understood the appeal of digging for gossip that Eyeglasses was always so obsessed with. Hunting through other people’s private lives was a little immoral, sure, but it was genuinely exciting.

Just as he perked up his ears and tried to catch more, his phone in his pocket buzzed again.

This time the vibration lasted several seconds before stopping, making Xiaowei nearly think someone was calling him.

He instinctively reached into his pocket, wanting to take out the phone and check, but after sweeping his gaze over the teachers eating around him, he stopped again.

He was wearing a school uniform and could be recognized at a glance as a student. In this cafeteria full of staff, he stood out like a sore thumb. Pulling out his phone now would be no different from wearing a kimono to stroll through a martyrs’ cemetery - pure provocation.

Xiaowei sneaked a glance at the homeroom teacher and saw that he was still over there on the phone, agitated and clearly not finishing anytime soon. So he simply set aside his distractions and dug into the food with gusto.

It had to be said, the food here was fucking delicious!

He’d have to brag about it to Fatty and the others when he got back!

It took about ten minutes before Cheng Yong finally hung up and came back, with a trace of exhaustion and defeat he couldn’t quite hide.

"Teacher has to leave for something. We’ll talk again another day when I’m free," he instructed, then walked over and patted Xiaowei on the shoulder. "No rush. Eat slowly."

Xiaowei mm-hmmed a couple of times and said, "See you, Teacher," then watched the homeroom teacher leave the cafeteria before turning his attention back to the two dishes.

He had been eating mainly the staple food just now and deliberately hadn’t taken much of the dishes, leaving more than half for Old Cheng. Looking at it now, that seemed a little unnecessary.

Acting on the principle of not wasting food, and with the dishes still warm, Xiaowei wolfed down everything left on the table, let out a satisfied belch, and swayed his way out of the cafeteria.

As soon as he stepped out the door and came down the stairs, the heavy thing hanging in his pocket tugged at his pants, and he suddenly remembered the earlier phone vibration.

Xiaowei looked around, ran to a deserted corner, opened WeChat, and sure enough it was a message from the dorm group.

The last one was from Big Cannon, who said, "I want another round!"

What the hell is this guy talking about? So random...

Xiaowei’s eyes filled with confusion. He tapped into the "Yuancheng F4" group chat and dragged straight to the first unread message.

That message was from Fatty, sent more than an hour ago. Its contents were... a perfectly ordinary-looking line, yet it made Xiaowei’s pupils shrink hard.

Fatty: @ Zhiwei. Bro, I took your backpack back to the dorm for you!

"Fuck..."

Thinking of what Big Cannon had said at the end, a huge wave of unease suddenly surged up in Xiaowei’s heart. His mouth opened slightly as he cursed, but the volume was extremely low, more compressed gas than sound.

He forcefully controlled his trembling fingers and slid the following messages into view. The instant he saw the content, though, he felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave.

Fatty: @ Zhiwei. You little bastard, that was dirty!

Eyeglasses: That thing is ridiculously realistic!

Big Cannon: Fuck! Feels amazing!

Fatty: Feels amazing +1

Eyeglasses: Feels amazing +2

Big Cannon: Better than that bitch’s pussy!

Big Cannon: I want another round!

Time: more than twenty minutes ago.