CH 11

Translation checker: Rin

Editor: Junyans

Yu Ran had one hand wrapped tightly around the waistband of his pants to prevent it from slipping down. The other was inserted in his back pocket as he feigned a calm and casual pose. 

There were so many people in front of him that he definitely wouldn’t be able to defeat them, so he had to win at least in terms of temperament.

“Why do you want to fight with me?” Yu Ran asked Cai Hanchuan, “Just because I pressed your head into the Kung Pao Chicken last week?”

“Don’t you dare fucking mention it!” When Cai Hanchuan’s gaunt face glared down, his eyebrows looked even more fierce, “If you’re a man, talk honestly with your fists, don’t fucking use those dirty tricks! You’re a disgrace!”

“Fighting over such a frivolous thing, it’s you who’s a disgrace,” Yu Ran couldn’t help but laugh a little, “Are you trying to make a name for yourself in our first year? It’s funny… Prestige gained by violence will one day be taken away by an even greater violence. If you can’t get someone’s respect, then you simply can’t get it. Don’t bother trying.” 

Cai Hanchuan held himself back from attacking for a while, tilted his head and asked with interest: “Are you here to fucking educate me?”

“I’m here to make you apologize,” Yu Ran said calmly, “You’ve dirtied my friend’s new clothes.”

As soon as these words fell from his mouth, several people around him laughed out loud, calling him “stupid cunt” and “he’s crazy”. Cai Hanchuan laughed the hardest. His cheekbones were almost raised to his eyes, and he even tilted his head several times to express the novelty of this feeling.

Only when he had laughed enough did he say to Yu Ran: “Okay, you’ve got character. Then I’ll give you the stage — you can choose one of us to fight one-on-one.”

Yu Ran didn’t move his gaze. “I don’t fight, it’s stupid.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“If you admit your mistake, I’ll forgive you.” Yu Ran said.

The smile on Cai Hanchuan’s face faded, and he stared dead at Yu Ran with his muddy eyes. He clenched his fists and moved towards him, “Lǎozi gave you an inch and you actually dared to take a mile…” 

Even before he finished speaking, he violently swung his right arm out hard and fast, straight towards Yu Ran’s head.

— The punch was followed by a heavy muffled sound.

When Fang Zhao ran out of the office and came across Cai Hanchuan’s location, he was met with Yu Ran leaning against the wall, relying on his arms to support his shaky body. Beads of blood were faintly visible at the corners of his mouth as they snaked down his chin.

“Memx!” Jjl Ljcmtejc abbx jcbatfg rafq obgkjgv jcv ugjyyfv Te Ejc ys atf mbiijg, jiwbra iloalcu tlw eq jr tf obgmfv Te Ejc ab ibbx ja tlw, “Qtja jgf sbe qgfafcvlcu ab yf vfjv obg? Qtfgf’r atf rkjuufg sbe tjv ktfc sbe tjv mtjiifcufv wf yfobgf? Gjwc sbe, oluta wf yjmx!” 

Yu Ran could smell the metallic scent of the blood on his lips. He opened his mouth and breathed slowly, before pursing his lips and wiped the blood from the corners of his mouth. When he looked up at the ruthless-looking Cai Hanchuan, he also happened to see Fang Zhao at the entrance of the corridor.

Yu Ran averted his gaze and continued to look directly at Cai Hanchuan’s face, his Adam’s apple rolling a few times: “I am…different from you.”

After saying that, Yu Ran raised his hand and squeezed Cai Hanchuan’s sturdy wrist tightly. After a bit of struggle, he finally broke the other party’s hold on his shirt collar. Although at this moment he was forced to raise his head up, the endless hatred in his eyes was completely exposed to Cai Hanchuan.

“Fight back?” Yu Ran couldn’t help but sneer, his eyes shining even brighter, “Fighting for face is the most humiliating thing… Even if I’m beaten down by you ten thousand times, I’ll never let myself fall to the same level of stupidity as you.” 

Cai Hanchuan furrowed his eyebrows. Towering with rage, he clutched the back of Yu Ran’s neck and tried to smash his head against the wall. But Yu Ran suddenly gained strength from an unknown source. He actually straightened up his neck, resisted Cai Hanchuan’s brute force and stood firmly in place.

Since his childhood, Cai Hanchuan had beaten up many people who had acted like a pretentious prick in front of him. But he had never crossed paths with a person like Yu Ran, who was so willing to go out of his way to act like a pretentious prick that even if he was beaten and bleeding, he still insisted on holding back and refused to strike back.

The battle of force between boys was the most addictive thing for Cai Hanchuan. It could not only release his natural violent tendencies, but also satisfy his desire for conquest by dampening his opponent’s spirit. Bruises, blood, scars… He was used to greedily and readily turning each and every high-spirited and vigorous teenager into his own defeated minion.

But the prerequisite for his boiling passions was a fair duel. When his own flesh and blood bore the fresh pain, he would transform this pain into energy that would stimulate his fighting spirit, thus becoming fiercer and more powerful and achieving triumph in every battle. 

And so, beating someone who didn’t fight back was humiliating for Cai Hanchuan.

However, he fucking met Yu Ran, this frustratingly stubborn person, who was willing to take a beating but not fight back, and go as far as to actually want to stand on a high ground and look down upon him, put on airs and say “I’m different from you”. Cai Hanchuan had no choice but to gradually reduce the strength of his fists.

“Motherfucker…” Cai Hanchuan finally let go of his hand, “Are you fucking here to court death?”

When Yu Ran tugged the corners of his mouth, he felt a tearing pain, but he still insisted on smiling and slowly raised his head. He gazed across Cai Hanchuan’s shoulder, and met Fang Zhao’s stare. 

Maybe he really was courting death… But since he had said that he would not fight over meaningless things, Yu Ran didn’t want to break this promise.

“I had already told you, I’m here to make you apologize,” Yu Ran straightened his back, his right fist had finally gathered enough strength, and then he growled lowly, “You fucking got my friend’s new clothes dirty — !”

In the blink of an eye, Yu Ran directly threw a very heavy punch at Cai Hanchuan’s face. This caught the other party off guard. Cai Hanchuan’s vision went black, he took half a step back, and almost fell to the ground.

Fang Zhao stared at the scene in a daze. He saw Yu Ran’s right hand trembling continuously under the reaction force, so it was clear how much strength he had poured into that punch. 

Cai Hanchuan grew dizzy and he felt like something was buzzing in his head. The people around him rushed up to help him finish off Yu Ran but he raised his hand to stop them. He frowned and sucked in a mouthful of cold air because of the pain on his face. He saw Yu Ran rubbing the blood on his lips forcefully, but there was still a layer of light red crusted on his cheeks, which made him look a bit comical.

“Yu Ran, I’ll just ask you one thing,” Cai Hanchuan found that there was a faint taste of blood in his mouth, “Do you fucking have to act like a pretentious prick to this degree?”

Yu Ran raised the zipper of his school uniform jacket back up to its highest point and the collar stood up, covering the lower half of his face. His hair was a bit messy, and the two strands of hair that had stood up to make a hollow peach heart were already tilted out of shape.

“A real man’s fist only fights for his beliefs. A lowly nobody like you won’t understand this,” Yu Ran cleared his throat, lifted his pants tightly and went away, leaving Cai Hanchuan with only the dashing view of his back. 

“Have you guys ever seen such an…” Cai Hanchuan cast a bewildered and puzzled look at the people around him, “such an astoundingly big fool like Yu Ran?”

The others shook their heads one after another, not knowing how to evaluate the fight that had occured just now.

The bell rang at the end of the big break, and peace returned to Chengjun Middle School.

“You really scared me to death. When you didn’t fight back, I thought your arms were broken by him… Are you okay? Let’s, let’s go to the infirmary first,” Fang Zhao followed him closely, and anxiously kept on asking him where he was injured. 

“I’m okay. Only a few scratches, not even as painful as a mosquito bite,” Yu Ran waved his hand, not at all caring about the wounds. “Let’s go back to class. What’s the third period?”

“Today’s Monday, so there’s a class meeting.”

“Āiyā, I’m doomed! The homeroom teacher is going to know about it,” Yu Ran found himself in a real predicament, “She won’t punish me by making me write a self-criticism review again, will she?”

“I don’t think…she would,” Fang Zhao said, “I just went to the Academic Affairs Office to tell the head teacher about Cai Hanchuan. When Teacher Bai knows, she’ll definitely understand you.” 

Yu Ran nodded, and the two hurried back to the classroom. The homeroom teacher was not in the class, and all the students were engaged in self-study.

Chu Mian had already finished all his homework, and now he was busy memorizing his Geography notes. He thought that the two in the front of his seat had disappeared for quite a while to buy snacks. He inadvertently glanced at the oncoming a Yu Ran and found that there was a shallow wound at the corner of his mouth and an inconspicuous bloodstain on his chin.

But Yu Ran looked as relaxed and cheerful as ever, not like he had just had a fight with others. Chu Mian, who was holding the notebook and totally distracted, suddenly realized that he had wasted half a minute of his precious time.

While continuing to review, Chu Mian heard the two people in front of him discussing what they had just done. Soon, he picked out some key information from their words, pieced together the chain of events and understood what had probably happened. At the end of the day, it turned out that the guy sitting in front of him was beaten up but did not fight back. 

“I had already told you, I don’t fight meaningless fights,” Yu Ran lifted up his sleeves again and leaned back in his chair to talk to Fang Zhao, “Compared with getting bruised all over, fighting back because of anger is what the biggest losers do.”

Behind them, Chu Mian casually said in a low voice: “I think that it’s you who can’t win against him.”

Yu Ran suddenly turned around and retorted, “How, how hard is it to win? My biggest opponent is only myself! I can’t go against my own beliefs!”

What belief and nonbelief… Chu Mian scoffed at this. 

This was what he could not stand the most about Yu Ran — all day long, his words and actions were abnormal. What came out of his mouth were words that were irrelevant to his daily life, and he liked to call himself the “the male protagonist”. In the end, what kind of mediocre work would choose a muggle like Yu Ran as the male protagonist, huh? Only someone who was simply too presumptuous.

“Just say you can’t win if you can’t win. You think not fighting back is another kind of victory, but actually, it’s just an Ah Q Victory, nothing more,” Chu Mian could not help but finish speaking, but felt that, with Yu Ran’s level of intellect, he might not even know who Ah Q was. 

Yu Ran looked at Chu Mian and pondered, “Well, that’s the difference between you and me.”

He seemed to have pulled the corners of his mouth again when he just spoke, and some beads of blood oozed out. He quickly pulled out a tissue and pressed it down.

Chu Mian silently lowered his head to review but after a while, he found that he was still stuck on the same page of notes, unable to calm down and concentrate.

Perhaps it was because of his increased frequency of contact with Yu Ran recently, but Chu Mian’s original dislike towards him had slowly decreased. Knowing that the other party had been beaten up so many times for nothing, he had a momentary attack of empathy and couldn’t help but feel a little irritated. 

But the object of anger was not the person who had beaten up Yu Ran, but Yu Ran himself — he could shamelessly beg others in order to copy homework, but when his body was injured, he foolishly let people beat and scold him. How was this driven by “belief”? It was clearly a problem with his choice of values, right?

The more Chu Mian thought about it, the more he hated iron for not turning into steel. Fortunately, he had a strong ability to regulate his emotions and didn’t fall asleep directly because of anger.

He took a deep breath, turned around and took out a few band-aids from his school bag, and threw them forward forcefully. Because of his cataplexy, it was easy for him to knock against something and get wounded, so he had to carry many medicines on him at all times.

Suddenly something flew onto his desk, which startled Yu Ran. After staring intently at the band-aids, his eyes softened immediately and he turned his head to look at Chu Mian gratefully. 

“Don’t look at me.” Before Yu Ran could thank him, Chu Mian spoke impatiently, “Your stupidity is contagious.”

Yu Ran didn’t care about Chu Mian’s tone, he just grinned because of Chu Mian’s concern for him: “What? You just said my stupidity is contagious, then if you stare at someone, won’t that person get pregnant… Hey, you’re staring at me right now! It’s over! I’m pregnant with Chu Mian’s—”

Chu Mian immediately covered his mouth, prohibiting him from talking nonsense in class.