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After P.E ended, Lu Che was temporarily called over by Fu Dai, and Xu Xing seized the opportunity to hurriedly urge Wang Zicong to leave quickly.

During dinner, Xu Xing sat in the cafeteria, wolfing down his food. Since Tang Mian and Liu Peilian were sitting at the same table, Xu Xing finished his meal and left in a hurry, not even waiting for Wang Zicong.

He was afraid of running into Lu Che.

Or more accurately—

He wasn’t yet ready to face Lu Che.

The words Lu Che had said to him during gym class echoed in Xu Xing’s mind, refusing to dissipate. The lingering warmth of the sunset only made Xu Xing more agitated as he recalled the scene. His heart was a mess.

The classroom was empty as his classmates were still at the cafeteria. Xu Xing slumped over his desk, listlessly pressing a cold thermos against his face.

His mind was in chaos: Lu Che’s request to simply hug him — Xu Xing should have refused outright. The request wasn’t normal. But on second thought, Xu Xing realized that Lu Che wasn’t making this odd request out of his own will; it was all because of the troublesome red string messing with him.

Without the red string interfering, Lu Che would have remained the carefree school heartthrob from the basketball team, with no reason to care about someone like Xu Xing, let alone give him a second glance.

Thinking about this, Xu Xing suddenly felt a bit sorry for Lu Che.

Xu Xing sighed softly.

Having experienced the uncontrollable power of the red string himself, he knew all too well how frustrating it was. He had thought the red string had settled down recently, but now it seemed the forced pull had shifted onto Lu Che instead.

At least Xu Xing knew that the red string was behind all this. But Lu Che, completely unaware of the red string’s influence, now mistakenly believed that he was in love… in love…

Xu Xing felt an intense discomfort at the thought. The idea of “Lu Che liking him” sparked like a tiny flame in his mind, but he quickly extinguished it with his own hands.

Feeling agitated, Xu Xing buried his face in the crook of his arm.

Slowly, students began to return to the classroom.

Xu Xing hid his thoughts, grabbed his water bottle, and headed to the front of the room to get some water. Seeing that the water dispenser wasn’t on, he flipped the switch and stood by as the water began to heat up.

Just then, a voice sounded behind him, “Peilian, you didn’t go back to the dorm?”

Xu Xing turned to see Lin Peisang walking toward the podium, holding a pink cup and a thermos bottle, also waiting for water.

Xu Xing said, “You’ll have to wait a bit. The water dispenser just started heating up.”

Lin Peisang replied with a friendly “okay” and stood near Liu Peilian’s desk, chatting casually with him.

Xu Xing glanced at Liu Peilian, noticing that Liu was now calm and collected when interacting with Lin Peisang. He was no longer the pitiful person being tormented by the red string.

Seeing this, the last of Xu Xing’s worries evaporated.

Liu Peilian’s shift in emotions served as proof: as long as the knot of the red string was untied, there was still hope for Lu Che.

Xu Xing furrowed his brow slightly. When the water finished boiling, he filled his bottle with warm water and returned to his seat with a much lighter step.

Just as he sat down, Lu Che returned. He didn’t immediately sit down but stood in the aisle, waiting for Xu Xing to approach. With a smile on his face, he complained, “Class leader, you didn’t wait for me to go to the cafeteria. I had no appetite for dinner because of that.”

Xu Xing rolled his eyes at him and sat back in his seat.

Since Wang Zicong hadn’t returned yet, Lu Che casually sat in Wang’s seat.

Xu Xing was exasperated by Lu Che’s annoying behavior. Just as he was about to scold him, Lu Che shamelessly leaned in for a hug, resting his head against Xu Xing’s neck. Xu Xing shrugged his shoulders twice but couldn’t shake him off, so he grumbled unhappily, “Let go.”

Lu Che obediently let go, then said, “Just marking off my daily hug.”

Xu Xing snapped, “You’re talking nonsense! Did you forget what happened during gym class?”

A hug?

Lu Che must’ve hugged him two, three, four, five, six, seven, or eight times today already!

Lu Che grinned shamelessly, “Oops, my mistake. I meant a hug every hour~”

“…”

Xu Xing: “Get lost.”

Ignoring him, Xu Xing pulled out a practice book from the pile of books, only to hear a girl’s voice behind him, “Lu Che, the homeroom teacher asked me to bring these to you.”

Lu Che responded, “Just leave them there.”

Unable to resist, Xu Xing turned his head and saw Yu Canchun holding a stack of homework, placing it on Fu Dai’s desk.

Yu Canchun left after setting down the homework, never making eye contact with Xu Xing.

Xu Xing then remembered that although he had untied most of the red strings from Lu Che’s ankles during gym class, a few untouchable ones remained. He wasn’t sure if the string related to Yu Canchun had been resolved yet.

Lu Che casually flipped through the homework. Since he didn’t know all the names of his classmates yet, he decided to wait for Fu Dai to distribute it.

He turned his head and noticed Xu Xing was looking at him, so he smiled and asked, “What’s up?”

Xu Xing, feeling a bit conflicted, asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be the class representative responsible for writing the daily problem on the backboard? Are you really asking a girl to do it for you?”

Lu Che let out a sound of realization, then couldn’t help but chuckle as he answered, “Oh, that? The class advisor did ask me to write it, but I thought it was too troublesome, so I refused. That girl was in the office at the time asking questions and offered to the advisor that she could take care of writing it. It has nothing to do with me.”

Xu Xing: “…”

That’s called trying to please someone!

Nothing to do with him? Yeah, right.

Lu Che blinked innocently and asked, “Are you upset?”

Xu Xing turned back to look at his homework and said, “You’re crazy. I was just asking.”

The smile on Lu Che’s face deepened, and he leaned forward, resting his chin on Xu Xing’s elbow, teasing, “If you don’t want her to help me write, will you do it for me?”

Xu Xing raised his arm to shrug him off, irritated. “Get lost. Can’t you write it yourself?”

Lu Che, delighted to see Xu Xing jealous, laughed and said, “Alright, I’ll go and do it myself tomorrow.”

Xu Xing: “…”

Xu Xing hadn’t expected Lu Che to agree so readily, and he had to seriously think about it. If Lu Che really did start writing the daily question on the blackboard himself, would Yu Canchun misunderstand and think Lu Che was being considerate of her?

And if that caused the red string to flare up again… things could get even worse.

Frowning, Xu Xing said, “Forget it, forget it. You don’t need to go.”

Lu Che’s smile broadened, and he teased, “Already starting to feel sorry for me?”

Xu Xing rolled his eyes, just as Wang Zicong appeared at the back door with his heavy schoolbag. As Wang walked closer, Xu Xing said to him, “Desk mate, from now on, you can help Lu Che write the daily question on the blackboard. In return, he won’t check your homework. Deal?”

Wang Zicong blinked, tilting his head in thought for a moment before agreeing, “Sure!”

After resolving the matter in just a few words, Xu Xing shifted his gaze back to Lu Che’s face, only to see Lu Che, without warning, hugging him again.

Although Lu Che hugging him wasn’t unusual, doing it in front of Wang Zicong made Xu Xing feel even more awkward. He struggled to push Lu Che away, annoyed. “What’s gotten into you this time?”

Lu Che grabbed Xu Xing’s wrist and leaned close to his ear, whispering, “Just let me hug you for a bit, or I won’t be able to hold back~”

“…”

Lu Che’s breath tickled Xu Xing’s neck, and his deep, magnetic voice sent shivers down Xu Xing’s spine. But Xu Xing wasn’t soothed by it—he was startled.

Xu Xing desperately wanted to understand what Lu Che meant by “won’t be able to hold back,” but he didn’t dare to test it on himself.

With his face clearly showing his displeasure, Xu Xing let Lu Che hug him for a while. Fortunately, Lu Che didn’t push his luck and quickly let go, returning to his seat.

Xu Xing rubbed his wrist, having quietly exerted his strength earlier, but realized he didn’t have as much strength as Lu Che.

His emotions were complicated, and that night, after the evening study session, he seriously considered hitting the gym and lifting weights after the college entrance exams.

A small voice in his mind whispered, “By then, it might already be too late…”

Xu Xing chose to ignore it.

The next morning.

The third period was physics.

The class advisor was going over the morning quiz paper, pointing out a freebie question and stressing, “I mentioned it last class: the writing for light interference and diffraction is different, right? Un, not Uand? Our classmate Ke Di loves to write ‘diffraction’ wrong. I’ve already made him copy it 100 times, and I hope there won’t be a second person.”

“Pfft—”

Fu Dai commented below, “Ke Di really lives up to being a naughty Teddy, huh?”

Ke Di shamelessly complained, “Copying it 100 times is torture! I copied it so many times that I’ve almost forgotten how to write the character ‘she’! My heart hurts!”

The boys in the class started to egg him on, laughing.

Ke Di was cracking dirty jokes, but in his heart, he was genuinely suffering. Copying the same character 100 times just made the word seem more and more unfamiliar, completely defeating the purpose of reinforcement.

The class advisor cut in quickly, reminding them, “Next Thursday and Friday are the monthly exams. I hope that after the results are out, those of you laughing the hardest now will still be laughing then.”

With that, the boys instantly fell silent.

The class advisor continued, “Recently, I saw a rather unsavory game online called ‘Whichever subject you fail, you use that subject’s representative as your profile picture.’ Isn’t that over the top? Let’s play it differently: ‘Whichever subject’s class average ranks first in the grade, you use that subject’s representative as your profile picture.’ Want to play?”

The students were enthusiastic: “Yes!!”

The class reps loudly protested: “No!”

Ke Di, of course, shouted the loudest, “What about me? What about me? I’m a rep too!”

Unfortunately, with the pressure from all subjects in senior year, PE held no importance, and even the PE teacher and the PE monitor were ignored.

The homeroom teacher paid no attention to Ke Di and went straight to explaining, “Let me go over the rules—during the midterm exam, if our class ranks first in the average score of any subject among the regular classes in the grade, the entire class can use the class representative’s photo from that subject as their avatar.

“But, if the class representative of that subject ranks in the top 100 for the subject in the whole grade, the representative has a veto power. Fair enough, right?”

After hearing the rules, the class excitedly started discussing.

The homeroom teacher came up with this game not only to boost the class’s enthusiasm for studying but also because the six class representatives for Chinese, Math, English, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology all had excellent scores in their subjects, so making it into the top 100 of the grade would be no problem for them.

The homeroom teacher clapped their hands and said, “No objections, right? So—I’ll start by rallying some votes. Class, our physics representative is Lu Che, after all, so girls, let’s make an extra effort!”

Hearing this, the more lively students in the class started teasing, saying, “The homeroom teacher will stop at nothing to boost their performance,” while many others curiously turned to look at Lu Che, eager to see his reaction. But Lu Che, with his hand on his cheek, nonchalantly twirled his pen, completely unbothered.

Lu Che wasn’t fazed by the homeroom teacher’s scheme; after all, getting into the top 100 in Physics was an effortless task for him.

Author’s note: The homeroom teacher has entered the scene and gifted you a “show-off-your-love” package!