Thirteen Wonders (ShíSānYāo) : Chapter 21 - Ultimate Red Dragon
Chapter 21: Ultimate Red Dragon
When people fully wake up, they naturally want to do what they’re supposed to. For a senior high school student, that means studying hard.
Unlike others, Zheng Yinyin had an extra ‘resource’—Zhou Yao and Ying Nian.
With these two top students guiding her, facing difficult problems instantly felt less intimidating.
“You want us to tutor you?”
Ying Nian bit into a lollipop, confirming once more, “Really? But—” She pointed at Zhou Yao before turning the finger toward herself. “I can be really strict, you know. If you don’t study properly or just don’t get it no matter how I explain, I might lose my temper and yell at you. Think it through.”
Zhou Yao also warned her, “At this point, catching up won’t be easy.”
Zheng Yinyin had already made up her mind. “I know. I know this will be a burden to you, that it’ll slow you down. You two were doing just fine on your own, and now you have to drag along someone like me, someone so stu—”
“Alright, alright, stop scolding yourself,” Ying Nian interrupted. “It’s making me feel bad. If you want tutoring, then fine. But if I say something harsh, don’t take it to heart. If you need comfort, go find your homeroom teacher instead!”
Zheng Yinyin went from being nervous to smiling and nodded firmly.
Zhou Yao had no objections to begin with, so she simply smiled in agreement.
When Jiang Jiashu heard that the three girls were studying together, he scoffed, “There’s only half a year left before the college entrance exam. It’s too late to catch up. If she had started earlier, maybe.”
Chen Xuze ignored him. While Jiang Jiashu was relieving himself, he turned his head to glance at Chen Xuze, only to be met with a sharp glare that made him quickly look away.
“Then what do you say—should we join them too?”
Chen Xuze zipped up his pants, walked out to wash his hands, and said casually, “Zhou Yao said that when girls study together, having guys around would be inconvenient.”
Jiang Jiashu froze.
Inconvenient? How?
Before he could figure it out, he was hit with another realization—
Wait a minute… Chen Xuze had actually asked about it in advance? He’d never seen him take the initiative like this before. This was a first.
……
The three girls studied together whenever they could—during breaks, in the evenings when they had a free period, and even at Ying Nian’s house after school.
“You see, first you do this, then from here…”
To be fair, Ying Nian was actually quite patient. But no matter how patient she was, she couldn't change the fact that Zheng Yinyin’s foundation was extremely weak.
After ten minutes of explaining a single problem, they were still stuck. Ying Nian was on the verge of pulling her hair out.
No. 7 High School was indeed a top school, but every school had its top students and its struggling ones. If you compared the top ten with the bottom thousand, the gap would be immeasurable.
Unfortunately, Ying Nian and Zhou Yao were among the top, while Zheng Yinyin was hovering in the lower-middle ranks.
Zheng Yinyin looked embarrassed. Zhou Yao softened her voice and asked, “Look at this problem. Tell me, what part do you not understand?”
Zheng Yinyin thought for a while before pointing at the problem. “Well… this part, why does it work like that? And this part, why is it this answer? And here, why does this equal that?”
She… didn’t understand anything at all.
Everything was a problem. Ying Nian suddenly regretted agreeing to tutor her.
Just as the three of them fell into silence, Zheng Yinyin suddenly raised her hand and gave herself a hard slap across the face.
Zhou Yao caught her wrist. Ying Nian immediately shouted, “What are you doing?!”
“We only said you’re struggling because you’re anxious—there’s no need to—”
Before Zhou Yao could finish, Zheng Yinyin shook her head, pressing her lips together. A red mark was already forming on her cheek, her eyes turning red to match. “I’m just mad at myself.”
“All these years, everyone else has been studying hard and working toward their future. Look at you and Ying Nian—you never gave up, no matter your circumstances. You’ve always taken your future seriously and worked hard to become better people.”
“And me?”
“My time, my life, everything about me—I’ve wasted it all because I didn’t care enough.”
Zheng Yinyin continued, “I didn’t hit myself because I’m stupid. I hit myself because I’m useless, because I was careless about my own future!”
Zhou Yao and Ying Nian fell silent for a long time. Finally, Zhou Yao took out a tissue and gently wiped her face. “Alright, don’t think about it too much. Everything takes time. No one becomes great overnight. It’ll be fine, I promise—I’ll make sure you learn.”
“And me too!” Ying Nian changed positions. Just moments ago, she was the strict one, but now she was gently patting Zheng Yinyin’s cheek like coaxing a child. “It won’t hurt, okay? Our Yinyin is very smart.”
They chatted for a bit, and Zhou Yao and Ying Nian rarely talked about their own struggles with studying. Even the smartest students had difficulties, and as they shared their experiences, their eyes grew misty.
After that, they got back to their exercises. Compared to earlier, Zheng Yinyin was finally making some progress—she could actually understand some of it now.
While snacking on fruit and chatting, Ying Nian asked, “Hey, Yaoyao, you and Chen Xuze are neighbors. If he ever runs into a problem he doesn’t understand, would he come to you for help?”
“Ask me?” Zhou Yao was visibly stunned.
Ying Nian, unaware of the situation, continued, “Yeah, your grades are better than his. If he doesn’t understand something… tsk, I’d love to see that. I wonder what kind of expression he’d have when asking for help.”
Back then, she and Chen Xuze weren’t close. They couldn’t stand each other—Chen Xuze thought she was an idiot, and she found his expressionless face downright creepy in broad daylight. Even though Jiang Jiashu was between them, they had gone years in the same school without ever speaking a word to each other.
The thought of seeing Chen Xuze humbled was actually quite amusing.
Zhou Yao seemed to recall something and couldn’t help but smile. “Him? He never asks anyone for help.”
“Huh?” Ying Nian, still munching on fruit, didn’t believe it. “No way. When you guys were little, like in second grade… or first grade, didn’t your parents take you to ask other neighborhood kids for help with homework when you didn’t understand something?”
“Never,” Zhou Yao said. “Chen Xuze never needed help with anything. His homework, or anything else—he’s never needed anyone else to intervene.”
“Besides, all these years, I’ve never seen him struggle with a single question.”
“I don’t believe it!” Ying Nian insisted. “What if he really ran into something he couldn’t solve? Like, imagine if he was in first grade and suddenly decided to do advanced calculus. I wouldn’t be able to do that, would he?”
Zhou Yao replied, “If that were the case, he’d buy a textbook and work through the basics bit by bit. He’d rather spend an enormous amount of time figuring it out himself than simply ask someone for the answer.”
Ying Nian was speechless. “That’s such a bizarre personality. He refuses to take shortcuts and insists on wasting time like this.”
Zhou Yao just smiled without saying anything. The example Ying Nian gave was pretty strange—why on earth would a first-grader randomly decide to study advanced calculus?
As Ying Nian continued her rambling, the topic brought back memories for Zhou Yao.
Back when she struggled with homework, her mother or father would often take her to the Chen family’s house. Since Chen Xuze’s parents were usually not home, it was always his grandparents sitting by the door or watching TV in the living room.
They adored her. Whenever she visited, they never ignored her like those elders who favored boys over girls. Instead, they warmly washed fruit for her, and sometimes, in their delight, they’d pick her up and say, “Let’s see if our Yaoyao has gotten any heavier.”
Grandmother Chen made delicious glutinous rice cakes. Whenever she had them, she’d pile up a full plate for Zhou Yao and Chen Xuze to eat while doing homework. Just eating wasn’t enough—before Zhou Yao left, she’d pack up another full bowl for her to take home.
Zhou Yao remembered that when Chen Xuze helped her with homework, he was always quiet. He would simply stare at the question, and if she made a mistake, his brow would furrow slightly.
“Here—” He would point with the tip of his pen, tapping lightly. “Redo it.”
Sometimes, when she was confused and didn’t know where she went wrong, he wouldn’t say a word—he would just rewrite the entire problem himself. If he was in a bad mood, he wouldn’t even do that. Instead, he would just watch her, silently urging her to erase her work and start over from scratch, step by step.
Other kids in the neighborhood who asked Chen Xuze for help usually ended up crying. After enough times, they stopped coming altogether. But she was different.
From first grade to sixth grade, from his cold demeanor to the day his eyes turned red, to that hug scented with the fragrance of oranges—his actions, little by little, became softer.
That hug—perhaps it was the key moment that changed many things between them. Zhou Yao understood this in her heart. That day in the hospital room, when Chen Xuze’s eyes turned red, when his gaze shifted in that instant—since then, he had become almost a different person from before.
When they were kids, they often climbed that slope. At first, she was too scared, afraid of falling. Chen Xuze had already run up ahead, his footsteps quick and steady. Impatient, he would reach out his hand to her:
“Hurry up! I’ll pull you up, you won’t fall!”
So she believed him. Whenever she was afraid, she would wait for him to extend his hand and pull her up with all his strength.
By the time she could run up the slope on her own, she reached out to him—only to realize that they were no longer facing the same direction.
She hadn’t found his hand waiting for her. Instead, he had pushed her down.
Ying Nian often said, “I’ve never seen Chen Xuze treat anyone the way he treats you. Really. I know I always call him names, and he looks all cold and indifferent, but the little details make it obvious—he’s different when it comes to you, Yaoyao.”
Different.
Of course, she knew that.
What she didn’t know was—when exactly did that difference begin?
And why?
……
The next day, a heavy downpour hit. Zhou Yao hadn’t brought an umbrella. She had a package waiting for her at the school office—a book she had ordered—so she borrowed a classmate’s umbrella to fetch it. But the wind was too strong, flipping the umbrella inside out. On her way back, she got caught in the rain, soaking half her body.
Her classmate asked with concern, “Are you okay, Zhou Yao? You—”
“Achoo—!”
Before they could finish, she sneezed awkwardly, clearly embarrassed.
She returned the umbrella, apologized, and insisted on buying a new one to replace it, only to be met with firm refusals. Taking off her school jacket, she used the dry inner lining to wipe herself down before draping it over her lap.
The first two periods passed without issue, but by the third, her face had turned flushed, her eyelids drooped, and her head started nodding against the desk.
The girl sitting beside her touched her forehead. “Whoa, you’re burning up!”
A few girls helped carry her to the infirmary. The school nurse took her temperature and frowned—it was a fever.
“Let her lie down on the bed first. I’ll set up an IV drip and give her some medicine. Who lives near her? Stay and watch over her for a while. If she doesn’t improve in two hours, she needs to go to the hospital.”
The students who brought Zhou Yao looked at each other. They were all willing to stay and take care of her, but when it came to someone who lived nearby and could easily contact her family...
Everyone knew exactly who that was.
……
Chen Xuze sat in his seat reading. To those unfamiliar with him, it might seem like he was studying some martial arts manual, but in reality, it was just the latest exercise book.
A male student stood hesitantly at the classroom door for a long time before finally gathering the courage to knock.
“Chen—Chen Xuze—”
At the sound of his name, the whole class fell silent.
Jiang Jiashu and the others, who had been fooling around, turned to watch with great interest. The rest of the class also looked on with curiosity, waiting for a show. The only one who remained indifferent was Chen Xuze himself. His expression unchanged, he glanced at the boy without any clear acknowledgment.
The boy swallowed nervously and mustered his courage. “Uh… the school nurse said someone needs to stay and watch over her—so they can help take her home if necessary.”
Chen Xuze turned a page, saying nothing, looking entirely uninterested.
But the very next second, as if something suddenly clicked, he abruptly lifted his head—just in time to hear the boy continue: “The one who lives near you… Zhou Yao. Zhou Yao fainted from a fever. She’s in the infirmar—”
Before he could finish, the so-called ‘martial arts manual’ was swept off the desk. And the person who had been sitting there just moments ago had already disappeared—rushing out of the classroom like a violent gust of wind.
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