After downing a carton of brain-boosting milk, Lin Mo ended the exam with a performance beyond his usual level.
“Exam’s over!”
“All right, everyone, pens down. Stay seated and don’t move while the teachers collect the answer sheets. Anyone still writing will be treated as cheating!”
Once the math exam was over, some people turned into rage-flushed little men, some wore bitter-melon faces, and others couldn’t wait to rush out and compare answers. But most were waiting to sprint to the cafeteria and fight for food.
There were people who could run so fast their slippers flew off, and there were also people who could kick those flying slippers away mid-run.
In the past, at times like this, Lin Mo would be steaming with rage while crouching on the ground, getting ready to Naruto-run to the cafeteria and chow down.
Don’t laugh. Third-year high school students really did get hungry easily, with zero resistance toward pretty girls and food.
Of course, pretty girls ≠ food. Combining like terms is forbidden!
This time, he decided to stay put.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry.
It was that this frail body still hadn’t adapted to this heaven-defying power.
He needed time to digest it. If the mechanics really didn’t work, then he could only stack stats!
Deep Blue! Add—
“All right, you may leave the exam room.” The invigilator’s order interrupted his thoughts.
Immediately after, the starving students, like zombies gone mad with hunger, charged out past him with bloodthirsty faces, two of them even sliding out one after another.
There was also a boy who seemed to have noticed Li Zhihan’s presence. Suppressing his desire to eat, he stopped nearby and, like a gentleman, performed a fadeaway jump shot at the air.
Seeing this, Lin Mo couldn’t laugh.
Because he had done it before too.
A wave of noise rose inside and outside the classroom, while only Li Zhihan, lying on her desk, and Lin Mo, still calling out in his heart for Deep Blue to add points, remained in the exam room.
The two of them seemed to be acting in a silent play.
Lin Mo was waiting for her to leave. Anyone would be dumbfounded when suddenly faced with a “fiancée” who had popped out of nowhere.
But the other party didn’t seem to want to go.
The girl still sat properly in place, brows slightly furrowed, her small hands covering her ears. She seemed to really dislike the commotion after exams and had chosen not to go out for the moment in order to have some quiet.
Suddenly.
Three or four basketball-playing boys started dribbling outside the classroom. The sound was loud, piercing through the classroom, and they even mentioned Li Zhihan:
“Damn, I pulled gold in the math exam. I was in the same exam room as Li Zhihan!”
“What’s the damn use? Did she even pay attention to you?”
“She made eye contact with me. She’s definitely interested.”
“You were staring straight into her eyes, you idiot. How the hell does that count as eye contact?”
“She’s a top student from the key class, a favored daughter of heaven, you get it? Being able to talk to her would be enough for you to brag about for the rest of your life!”
“Hey, tomorrow’s exam is here too. I’ll go ask for her QQ directly!”
“Lol, I was in the same class as her in first year. She doesn’t even join the class QQ group. If you manage to add her, I’ll eat—”
“Heh, what if she uses WeChat? Maybe she just doesn’t have QQ? I looked it up. Her star sign is the slow-to-warm-up type. Once she gets familiar with you, it’ll be fine.”
“Hahahahaha, then Kobe must be warmed up as hell!”
“…”
Their joking voices bounced around the classroom.
The girl closed her eyes, her brows knitting even tighter. Her lashes trembled a little faster, casting a shadow like raven feathers across her cheeks.
Lin Mo watched as her dignified, upright back slowly bent down. As if protecting herself, she gradually curled up.
He couldn’t help putting himself in her shoes.
Who wouldn’t develop social anxiety in that situation?
After thinking for a moment, he figured they were “husband and wife” in some sense, and earlier, when the system unlocked dirt on her, it had been after they made eye contact.
Maybe if he interacted with her more… he could trigger more skills and dirt.
So he stood up and brushed past the girl.
Moving as lightly as he could, he closed the windows and drew the curtains.
After hesitating for a while, Lin Mo went outside the classroom again.
The classroom quieted down.
Li Zhihan, who had been covering her ears, opened her eyes in confusion and found that the surroundings had suddenly grown much darker.
She let go of her hands and discovered that the room was so quiet one could hear a pin drop. Only the voices outside remained.
“No playing ball in the hallway, all right? There’s no one on the sports field right now. You can go there.”
Was someone driving them away… a teacher?
While she was wondering, she heard some movement behind her. Frightened, she turned around.
It was that person, the one who had kept secretly looking at her during the exam, walking into the classroom at just that moment.
“Click.”
He glanced at her, then withdrew again.
Gently, he closed the door.
Li Zhihan froze. Even her father, when entering and leaving her room, had never moved so quietly.
But she never dared say anything, just as she would never do anything no matter how noisy it was outside the classroom or how glaring the sunlight was.
She was timid. Very, very timid. So timid that she was afraid to share her feelings with others. Yet everyone thought she was the most dazzling one.
So… was he the one who closed the windows and curtains?
Why?
She blinked. At first, she had thought that person was the same as everyone else, someone who liked staring at her and saying strange things.
The girl’s gaze couldn’t help drifting toward the seat where Lin Mo had sat.
There was a carton she had never seen before… milk? Had he left something behind? There seemed to be a small note on it too?
Driven by curiosity, she sat down in Lin Mo’s seat and looked at the note on the carton of milk.
The handwriting was not very neat. Boys were probably all like this:
“Take the milk as an apology.”
Li Zhihan was startled, then realized he was apologizing for his actions during the exam.
But she did not know whether this was a coincidence… because what she loved drinking most was milk.
To her, it was an instinctive craving, like an infant’s innate need for breast milk. She also had an inborn closeness to milk.
When she carefully savored it beneath that sense of intimacy, milk also carried a slight bitterness, a bitterness that was just right, making one forget joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, and feel calm.
Very calm.
“Lin Mo…” Li Zhihan looked at the exam room seat number and remembered his name.
“Huu…” She sighed.
She would accept this bit of goodwill, treating it as meeting a decent person and receiving a decent gift. She would think about returning the favor later. After all, her family still had many cases of milk.
Then, they could simply forget each other.
She did not like getting to know someone. The more she learned about a person, the easier it was to hate their flaws. She was afraid of ruining an originally beautiful impression, so it was enough to meet only once and remember that he was a good person.
Perhaps some people would call this perfectionism, but Li Zhihan simply felt that flaws would lead to arguments.
And arguments would shatter peace.
She was timid and easily frightened. Since she could not change her environment, she could only hide.
Picking up the milk, Li Zhihan, acting on the principle of not wasting anything, took a small sip.
“Mm…”
Unexpectedly, the milk tasted superb.
Her beautiful eyes suddenly widened.
It was so delicious that she could no longer hear the sounds outside and became immersed in her own world.
So quiet that it was addictive.
[Li Zhihan has developed a tiny amount of affection toward you. Remaining dirt unlock progress: 20%]
Damnable kindness.
Probably no one would have imagined that simply closing a window, drawing the curtains, and giving Li Zhihan a carton of milk would be enough to make her feel goodwill.
Lin Mo spent the entire evening self-study sorting out the things in his head.
In short, he had a very tragic future. But as for exactly how tragic…
It didn’t say.
If he wanted to figure it out, he could only unlock this so-called dirt.
He was already completely convinced of this thing now. Li Zhihan’s reaction had clearly been exactly the same as the system’s description.
Who could have known she had social anxiety? Lin Mo would rather believe she was a genderbent Qin Shi Huang, the kind who would ask people to transfer her fifty yuan.
“Ding-ling-ling-ling~”
The bell signaling the end of evening self-study rang. Lin Mo simply stopped thinking about it. School was over!
Damn it, who cared about things ten years in the future? For today’s math exam, he should at least be able to score a hundred and twenty. He was taking off!
Tomorrow’s English and minor subjects—he would chug brain-boosting milk like crazy too!
A gentleman wouldn’t refuse to use a cheat when he had one.
He discovered that the milk could be drunk slowly. The one-hour effect did not require drinking an entire carton; as long as he took one small sip, it would activate. Two cartons were enough to carry him through a whole day!
Move up a class!
Ah, the scenery of the key class… He would never again have to be mocked by Bai Limeng as a poor student.
Also, there was Xu Lingxi in the key class. Thinking of her, Lin Mo’s expression turned complicated.
How should he put it? In the terms of a love-addled brain…
He had loved. He had simped.
Back then, she had rejected him with the reason, “You’re not outstanding enough.”
Lin Mo wasn’t so petty as to turn love into hatred, but being looked down on was always unpleasant.
With this item, improving his grades in the future would be like receiving divine aid!
Love and romance were all floating clouds. Heh, he had already become a super male of the new era. With this system, he was like a tiger that had grown wings!
Pure love was outdated! Even his future would be ruined by women!
It was time to become a pure-color warrior—
“You seem very happy?”
Suddenly, as he reached the stairwell, a cool, clear female voice sounded faintly from behind him.
He could not have been more familiar with this voice.
It belonged to the stumbling block on his road to success, the cold-faced childhood friend who liked using Fiji Cups to honey-trap him and mocked him for being useless from time to time.
Lin Mo had just been about to get angry when the system popped up:
[You have known Bai Limeng for a long time. Partial dirt has been unlocked.]
[Bai Limeng, in truth, plans to keep you in the future.]
[The prerequisite is that you become a good-for-nothing who can only live off a woman.]
Wait, what?
The boomerang had come right back around.
Lin Mo’s thoughts suddenly opened up. He had always wondered why Bai Limeng never wished him well.
“About the Demon Girl Next Door Wanting to Raise Me into a Good-for-Nothing.”
Although Lin Mo believed being smacked in the face with LV wouldn’t hurt, and being stepped on by Valentino would definitely feel great,
when something like that happened with a childhood friend who had grown up sharing the same pair of shorts with him, it was a little, well…
Lin Mo turned around.
The girl with a high ponytail stood beneath the dim yellow light, her eyes bright, her teeth white, her skin fair as snow. She was a beauty through and through. It was just that her expression gave off a very impatient impression, but it did not affect her charm at all.
Standing there in the middle of the stairwell, she drew repeated glances from the passing students.
“Your gaze is kind of disgusting.”
Bai Limeng sighed and rolled her eyes while she was at it.