At that moment, Lu Qingyan's mood became extremely complicated—so complicated that it felt like her internal organs were playing musical chairs while her brain was holding a funeral.
She stared blankly at the spreading ink stain on Wang Jingyuan's jacket like a convicted criminal watching the judge raise the gavel.
Her thoughts scrambled in every direction, conjuring a hundred vivid ways to die, from slipping on a banana peel down the stairs to being smothered in her sleep by a vengeful sentient pen.
Her mouth opened and closed a few times like a fish flopping on land before she finally squeezed out a weak and mortified, "Sorry, that... I didn't do it on purpose. The ink kept getting stuck in my pen, so I was shaking it and then… it just… squirted. A lot."
She paused, then added in an even more pitiful tone, "How about… I take it home and wash it for you?"
Even as the words left her mouth, she internally winced. What was she even saying? Like ink stains could be washed out with hopes and detergent.
Wang Jingyuan didn't respond.
He just turned his head to glance at her, his expression unreadable. His cold eyes fell on her with the emotional weight of a guillotine. And then—slowly—he raised his right hand.
Lu Qingyan stiffened.
In her head, she flashed back to Chapter 96 of A Thorn in the Crown, where the villain Wang Jingyuan had punched a yellow-haired gangster straight into the hospital after a single insult. Was this it? Was she about to get chapter-96'd?
Was she about to go down in history as the girl who angered the villain by killing his jacket?
But instead of sending her flying across the classroom, Wang Jingyuan simply brought his hand to the zipper of his school uniform, pulled it down, and wordlessly took off the ink-stained jacket. With all the grace of a cold war general surrendering his sword, he draped it over the back of his chair.
Then he raised his eyebrows slightly, his gaze fell on her and he lowered his voice, asking slowly, "Only this one pen?"
The voice was calm and his expression was difficult to read.
Lu Qingyan nodded like a malfunctioning bobblehead. "Yeah," she said in a whisper, as if confessing to a felony.
Wang Jingyuan gave her a long, unreadable look—so long that she began to feel like she was being judged on a cosmic scale.
Then, without a word, he placed the pen he was using onto her desk. The body of it was still warm from his palm.
She stared at it in shock.
Then, as if she were invisible, he reached into his drawer, pulled out a spare pen and a clean paper, and began to work again—completely ignoring her existence.
Lu Qingyan felt that although Wang Jingyuan did not look at her with contempt and mockery like he did yesterday, but…
It still gave people an "Talking to you is a waste of oxygen. Standing near you drops my IQ. Your existence is like a mosquito buzz in my ear." type of feeling.
But that's okay, it didn't matter if he was too lazy to bother with her.
Lu Qingyan, holding the slightly warm pen, told herself again and again: It's okay, as long as he doesn't retaliate. I can handle disdain. Just no bodily harm.
She peeked at the ink-blotted jacket on the back of his chair, her guilt gnawing at her like a guilty hamster.
Maybe she should secretly buy him a new one online? But what if he thought she was trying to butter him up like those fangirls who stalked him during lunch breaks? What if he thought she had a scheme?
This villain was too high-maintenance. She was already spiraling.
Before she could complete her mental breakdown, the next class began. A gentle-looking female teacher walked in with a warm smile that made everyone instinctively sit straighter.
"Students," the teacher said pleasantly, "Old Hu had something urgent come up, so we'll be doing Chinese instead for this period."
Through the name printed on the coursework, Lu Qingyan learned that the gentle-looking teacher was named Tang Ya.
In front of her, Tang Jie—her neighbor and a veteran student of this school—had frozen like someone being drafted to war. He looked like he was going to cry.
So Lu Qingyan, with an ominous feeling creeping up her spine, sat up cautiously.
And then it happened.
Tang Ya clapped her hands. "Today, we'll be doing text recitation. With a twist."
The class groaned. Tang Jie looked like he had accepted death.
"In pairs," Tang Ya said sweetly. "Deskmates will recite alternate sections. If one fails, both will stand and be punished together."
Lu Qingyan's soul left her body.
She had just arrived yesterday, and hadn't even glanced at yesterday's material. Did they study Confucius? The Art of War? A tragic essay about a dying plum blossom? Who knew? All she remembered was the chaotic pen war she fought all night.
And Lu Qingyan noticed that she seemed to be the focus of the teacher today as she was called on right away by her.
And then—of course—Tang Ya's smiling eyes locked right on her.
"Lu Qingyan, you can start."
Lu Qingyan: "..."
Ma'am. Please. I'm a victim of educational neglect. Spare me.
But she stood up anyway.
Her mouth opened. And silence followed.
She didn't even know the title of the text.
Afterward, Wang Jingyuan was punished with her to stand.
He stood up without saying a word, his expression cold.
Lu Qingyan could feel the storm cloud gathering over her head. The villain's aura behind her was cold. Not just normal cold. Arctic, polar-vortex, iced-mocha-blizzard cold.
He stood taller than most of the boys in class, so when they stood together in the last row, it looked like a prince and his court jester—if the jester had just spilled hot soup on the prince's pants.
She felt that the antagonist probably thought that she was trying to find trouble with him and probably really wants to strangle her right now.
Lu Qingyan wanted to dig a hole and bury herself in it.
As the class continued, Tang Ya happily read through the lesson while Lu Qingyan had to awkwardly lean forward from time to time to take notes, standing the whole while.
Eventually, she couldn't take the silence anymore. She pulled a sheet of paper from her notebook and began to scribble:
She lowered her eyes in thought for a moment before she tore out a piece of paper.