Chapter 7

When Du Zhengxuan saw Chuuya Nakahara standing still, she kindly helped sort the books again.

She took several back from Dazai Osamu’s desk, redistributed the two piles, then divided Chuuya’s stack into two roughly equal heights.

“The monthly exam will probably cover these nine subjects. Most of it comes from the first book. Anything marked with a two or the word for two doesn’t need to be studied,” Du Zhengxuan said, then hesitated and asked, “Do you know the Chinese characters for one, two, three, and four?”

While she spoke, the portable translator kept working in sync. Whether it was “123” or the written numerals, the pronunciation came out exactly the same.

Chuuya paused, then nodded. “I... understand.”

Unlike Dazai, he clearly preferred speaking for himself over relying on the translator.

As long as it was a word he knew, he would say it himself, even if the sentence came out haltingly.

“That’s good,” Du Zhengxuan thought he was a little cute and almost laughed, but she quickly controlled her expression and said, “Some subjects already had next term’s books handed out in advance. You won’t need them this time, but keep them safe and don’t lose them.”

She pulled a few more books from the pile of required subjects.

The stack for the exam scope shrank a little, but it was still tall.

Chuuya remained silent. Du Zhengxuan couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking and wondered if he thought there were too many subjects.

That couldn’t be right, could it?

She had specifically checked online and knew that even in Japan, university entrance exams might be prepared according to the requirements of the target school, but at most they could still involve ten subjects.

Du Zhengxuan considered every possibility, except the one that mattered most: Chuuya Nakahara had never gone to school. This was, in fact, the first written exam of his life.

Nine subjects at once.

Finished in two days.

“...Two days?”

At last, Chuuya reacted, looking as if he had heard something incomprehensible. “So many... how are you supposed to do it in two days...?”

Because everything had to go through the translator, Du Zhengxuan was a beat slow as well.

Like a reporter doing a live remote broadcast, she stared for a few extra seconds at that face of his, which she especially liked, before understanding what he meant and explaining:

“It’s okay, really. Four subjects during the day, then one more in the evening on the first day, and you can finish in two days.”

Chuuya looked puzzled. “Night... also... school...?”

He had only said a little when his voice suddenly stopped. His expression tightened as he looked past Du Zhengxuan’s shoulder.

This was the first time she had ever seen him make that face, or rather, the first time in her life she had seen such an expression at all.

A deeply unfriendly look. A look that clearly said he was not welcome.

Almost by reflex, Du Zhengxuan sidestepped to avoid Chuuya’s line of sight, then turned to see what had caught his attention.

The person who had come in was Dazai Osamu. He was still wearing that black coat of his with his usual effortless style, though at least his sleeves were now properly in place compared with when he had first arrived.

He was carrying the top half of the school uniform jacket from the affiliated middle school. Whenever he ran into a homeroom teacher or someone checking discipline, he would walk along while pretending to put the uniform on, just enough to confuse the watcher’s eyes. As soon as he got beyond the other side’s detection range, he would immediately take the jacket back into his hands.

That was the secret behind Dazai Osamu’s strange, fashionably outlandish passage through campus, and Du Zhengxuan had witnessed his graceful, seamless maneuvering with her own eyes.

As for the sleeves of his coat, aside from the homeroom teacher’s furious rebuke of “Look at anyone dressed like that—only street punks dress this way!” there was probably also the possibility that the coat, with its warming pads stuck inside, was simply too heavy.

In any case, Dazai’s appearance was almost unchanged from when he had first arrived.

Compared with the cute and honest Chuuya classmate, who existed under a serious filter, he seemed a little colder and more distant.

Dazai also noticed Chuuya Nakahara. As if he didn’t care in the slightest about the other boy’s attitude, he smiled and said, “Well now, if it isn’t Chuuya. To come back so quickly is truly—”

They were speaking Japanese, and Du Zhengxuan’s anime-trained listening comprehension only allowed her to catch the very beginning.

Apparently the exchange was not a pleasant one. As the conversation continued, Chuuya’s expression turned angry, and he even lunged forward as though to grab Dazai by the collar.

What are you two trying to do? This is a civilized, disciplined month!

Du Zhengxuan’s eyes went wide, and she hurriedly stepped forward to wedge herself between them.

“Um, well, I mean...” She had positioned herself with her back to Chuuya and could only see Dazai’s cool, beautiful young face.

Under the other boy’s indifference, she faltered for a moment before remembering something she had meant to say:

“...Dazai, could you lend Chuuya that dictionary of yours for a bit?”

She had heard that Dazai and Chuuya came from the same place, so Du Zhengxuan had given Dazai a basic dictionary. It was a brand-new one she had originally planned to give Chuuya, only for him to be forced to stay home from school because of his hair...

Wait.

Only then did Du Zhengxuan belatedly realize something.

If the two of them were from the same place, and Dazai had a way of dealing with the discipline teacher, then if they were close, wouldn’t he have told Chuuya the solution long ago? How could he have stood by and watched Chuuya get suspended?

Uh-oh.

Indeed, after hearing her request, Dazai smiled at her, then looked away and said to Chuuya Nakahara:

“No.”

Crystal clear enunciation. Even Du Zhengxuan, a Chinese speaker, understood it.

And he had said it in Japanese, clearly aimed at Chuuya Nakahara.

As expected, Chuuya’s angry expression sharpened further. “You bastard...!”

Du Zhengxuan: “...”

She knew that phrase too well. Usually when the protagonist shouted those three syllables, he was already charging forward with his fists swinging.

If those two really fought, she would only get caught in the crossfire.

Out of the corner of her eye, Du Zhengxuan glanced toward the classroom. From the back row, she could see the whole class’s reaction.

She had thought maybe someone would step in to mediate, but instead found that the entire class was basically watching the show.

The posture, the expressions—only a bag of sunflower seeds was missing.

She could hardly blame them. After all, the two of them looked and carried themselves far too much like something outside the ordinary... Come to think of it, would those two even eat sunflower seeds?

Du Zhengxuan’s thoughts veered strangely off course for a moment.

No, perhaps that was not really going off course. It was more like mental self-soothing under pressure, the same principle as how one keeps recalling song lyrics during an exam.

If the two of them really started fighting, someone might even be tempted to pull out a phone smuggled through all the security checks and take pictures.

But that never happened in the end, because the discipline teacher arrived.

“The whole building can hear it coming from your class. I could hear you from the stairwell. The long break has already been over for twenty minutes, and you still haven’t rested enough? Don’t you know what the next class is? Why aren’t you taking out your books and previewing the lesson instead of talking nonstop here? Not a shred of self-awareness.”

Du Zhengxuan knew this speech by heart.

She didn’t dare spare the two of them another glance. Like a meek little creature, she sat back down and casually pulled out a book, opening it at random and pretending to read seriously, though she had no idea what subject it was.

The others must have reacted the same way, because in less than half a minute the classroom fell abruptly silent.

Only then did Du Zhengxuan notice that the whole floor had gone completely quiet. It seemed the discipline teacher had already visited each class before coming to theirs.

It was just like a horror story... which, to be fair, it absolutely was.

Du Zhengxuan grumbled to herself.

The two men in confrontation said no more, mostly because the instigator, Dazai Osamu, had chosen to stand down. Out of the corner of her eye, Du Zhengxuan saw him return to his seat in two steps and start reading.

Setting aside the time after he transferred in, he really had worked quite hard as the monthly exam approached. In the first couple of days, he had flipped through books like mad, and the dictionary Du Zhengxuan had given him had been worn almost to pieces.

But that left only Chuuya Nakahara still somewhat unclear on the situation. Having been forced to face the discipline teacher, he took a step back.

Du Zhengxuan knew it without even looking; she heard the heel of his leather shoe click against the floor.

The discipline teacher’s attitude, however, was much gentler.

He called Chuuya out with a wave and told him he had already received the medical certificate Chuuya had submitted. There was no need to burden himself mentally; he just needed to make a slight adjustment to his hairstyle and prepare properly for his first monthly exam.

Compared with the barking he did through the loudspeaker during exercises, this was much, much gentler. Perhaps it was beauty born of comparison.

After the discipline teacher’s “kindly concern,” he even looked at Du Zhengxuan once.

Du Zhengxuan found it inexplicably strange and didn’t dare raise her head, only kept silently reciting about productive forces and relations of production.

Chuuya Nakahara was about the same. After returning to his seat, he didn’t dare move for a long while, as though he had reverted to the state he’d been in on the morning of his first day at school.

For the remaining two classes, neither of them said a word. It wasn’t until the noon bell rang that Du Zhengxuan finally let out a breath.

She had started packing up several minutes early, so when the bell rang she was ready to stand and push her chair in.

She sat near the back door, which had the advantage of being easy to come and go from, but the downside was that class changes meant lots of foot traffic. Especially after school, if she packed up late and sat there, it would be awkward.

Still, in the spirit of neighborly friendship, Du Zhengxuan didn’t rush off. Instead, she casually asked Chuuya how he planned to handle lunch.

“Are you going home, or going to the cafeteria? If you’re going to the cafeteria, do you want someone to go with you?”

Du Zhengxuan had been going home at noon lately and had wanted to call out to Long Wan to leave together, only to find that woman had already departed with cold efficiency.

No, not just her. By the time Chuuya’s black portable translator had finished rendering two sentences, most of the class had already streamed out.

Du Zhengxuan thought, that’s bad. If she went downstairs now, she’d definitely get trapped on the stairs. It would take at least ten minutes just to get her bike out.

Hesitation would mean defeat.

So she simply changed tactics and sat back down, planning to use five minutes to memorize a few English words before leaving.

She reached for her little notebook of vocabulary when Chuuya, having finished listening to the translation, asked her haltingly, “You... going home...?”

Du Zhengxuan nodded. “Yeah, I’m going back. Want to come with me?”

“...”

Chuuya seemed to smile a little. “Yeah... go home.”

When Chuuya said that Japanese word, his pronunciation was clearly different from Du Zhengxuan’s. He stretched the syllables and spoke especially slowly, and Du Zhengxuan understood what he meant, then imitated his tone and repeated it once.

By the time that was done, even Dazai’s seat across the aisle had emptied. It was unclear whether he had also gotten stuck somewhere along the way.

Du Zhengxuan said, “There are too many people this time. Let’s leave a little later.”

Chuuya nodded in understanding. His fingertips brushed lightly over the desk a couple of times, and when he spoke again, he had switched back into fluent Japanese: “Thank you for helping me before.”

It took Du Zhengxuan a moment to realize which thing he meant. “The power outage? It’s nothing. I just happened to keep connecting to your home Wi-Fi for several days, so I thought I’d mention it. No need to be so polite.”

“It’s not only that,” Chuuya said. “And the reminder after that. In any case, it helped me a great deal.”

“...”

Du Zhengxuan looked at Chuuya and saw that his expression was very serious.

Her heartbeat quickened slightly. She didn’t know if it was adrenaline, but she still rummaged through her bag quite candidly and pulled out a test paper.

“You mean the question about the battlefield ration distribution? That was classical Chinese from the entrance exam. This one.”

She spread out a three-fold sheet corrected in red ink and pointed to the classical Chinese section.

There were two underlined lines of black text in the passage, reading:

The warships in the harbor, using a threat to demand double rations, stirred up a commotion in the prefectural capital. The officers and magistrates of the army seized the ringleaders and executed them according to law; the rest of the bandits were all driven back south.

Chuuya stared at it for a while, then asked, “...What is this?”

“Classical Chinese punctuation. You’re supposed to add the punctuation marks. This type of question is still on the monthly exam...” Du Zhengxuan glanced at Chuuya’s face, then very considerately changed tack and said, “It’s fine. They’re all multiple choice anyway. Even a guess has a twenty-five percent chance of being right.”

“...”

Chuuya nodded, though his expression remained grave.

Du Zhengxuan could roughly guess why.

It was said that foreign students were new here, and it was fine if they didn’t do well. But they were all adolescent boys, after all, and had some pride. When the results were posted later...

Besides, Chuuya clearly did not get along with Dazai Osamu. His rival had been burning the midnight oil every day, even wearing out his dictionary, and now Chuuya had to take an exam as soon as he came back. How could he not be anxious?

At noon, Du Zhengxuan thought it over and over again. After lunch, she took out the old New Chinese Dictionary she had used in elementary school and planned to give it to Chuuya in the afternoon as an emergency measure.

She had originally bought a new one to give Chuuya Nakahara, but by the time it arrived, he had already been suspended and sent home, so she had given it to Dazai Osamu instead.

Ordering another one now would take too long, so this would have to do. She only hoped he wouldn’t mind.

That afternoon, Du Zhengxuan gave the dictionary to Chuuya, at least bringing him to the same level as his sworn rival from his hometown in terms of basic supplies.

Chuuya Nakahara accepted it without the slightest concern that the reference book had been used by someone else, flipping through it with evident curiosity.

Unfortunately, Du Zhengxuan didn’t get the chance to teach him how to use it.

With the monthly exam approaching, all four afternoon classes were badly overrun. She had planned to tell him the instructions during evening self-study, but when she went off to eat dinner and came back, Chuuya Nakahara’s seat was empty, and he was nowhere to be seen even after self-study began.

Halfway through self-study, the homeroom teacher came in, looked around, and then left again.

Du Zhengxuan could tell the teacher’s eyes had fallen on Chuuya’s seat.

What was going on?

Before she could let her imagination run wild, Long Wan passed her a small slip of paper from the front.

Du Zhengxuan opened it and saw written on it:

How hilarious. This afternoon, when the campus heartthrob thought school was over, he happily went home. The homeroom teacher probably just went out to call him back for evening self-study. I’m dying laughing.

Du Zhengxuan: “...”

She was truly speechless.

She read the note twice, then turned to glance at Dazai Osamu beside the aisle and thought: Man, you really are tight-lipped. You’re from the same place, and yet you didn’t tell him a single word. How did you hold it in?

...No, wait. He didn’t hold it in.

Du Zhengxuan looked at the slight tremor of Dazai’s shoulders.

He failed to hold back the laughter.

At that moment, Du Zhengxuan looked around and suddenly realized that everyone sitting near her was some kind of talent.