Before Ma Xiaobo was even aware of what he was doing, he had already clicked on the link.
The email jumped to a webpage. It crashed immediately.
Ma Xiaobo realised in that moment that he’d been scammed and angrily closed the page.
He hadn’t even realised that the Trojan horse had already gotten into his computer.
The first period in the afternoon was a rest period, but the second and third periods had classes. Ma Xiaobo was in the office playing Minesweeper when he suddenly received a call from Duan Shumin.
Duan Shumin and their school principal Zhang Xianyuan had a very good relationship. On Monday the school was going to hold a grade-level meeting, and the principal even specifically urged Ma Xiaobo: “The one in your class, Duan Shumin’s son? His father told me that the child just came back from abroad and doesn’t like studying. Don’t make things difficult for him, give him some kind of class representative role.”
Ma Xiaobo knew full well that Principal Zhang wanted to get a loan from Duan Shumin.
After answering the phone, Duan Shumin was very polite and said: “Mr. Ma, I’m so sorry, are youin class right now?”
“Class hasn’t started yet, I was just taking a break.”
“It’s like this, I’m calling to ask about, recently…”
“About Duan Yuche? He has been doing well recently. I heard from the teachers of every subject that his homework has been completed on time.” Although, many heavily suspected that Duan Yuche had copied his homework. His test scores couldn’t drop any lower. The mathematics teacher in their class had a bad temper, and he happened to see Duan Yuche’s test paper, which only had the multiple choice section filled in – with all Cs. Upon seeing that, the teacher immediately gave Duan Yuche a zero.
The maths teacher had only found out today that the student who chose all Cs was none other than Class Seven’s Duan Yuche.
Moreover, Director Tang from the grade above them once caught Duan Yuche secretly smoking a cigarette. Just as he was about to catch him, the director saw that it was Duan Yuche and hesitated for a brief moment. Then Duan Yuche escaped with his accomplice.
Ma Xiaobo didn’t bring up these matters.
“No, I want to ask about the child who’s staying with us, Cao Feng, his situation.” Duan Shumin’s tone was very gentle, which made people feel just right and comfortable.
“Ah Cao Feng, hahaha. He’s also good at studying; I’ve got the grades here, and I’ll print out the full grade report on Monday. From a glance he’s probably going to be first place in our class this time. Not only are his studies good, but his morals, intelligence, physique, appearance, and hard work, everything is excellent. His cleaning is never lacking, he never tries to cut corners, and his character is also good. And the sports festival, he helped our class gain a lot of praise…”
Every time Ma Xiaobo saw Cao Feng, he would praise him effusively. He was never stingy with praise for outstanding students.
Duan Shumin was extremely happy when he heard that, and immediately said: “If he does well, then I don’t have to worry. By the way, Teacher Ma, can you let him be Duan Yuche’s tablemate? To be honest, Duan Yuche listens to his gege quite a lot. It would be beneficial to seat them together.”
“Understood, understood, this is a trivial matter.” Ma Xiaobo smoothly closed Minesweeper and opened the seating chart. He was about to place Cao Feng’s name next to Duan Yuche when he saw the words Cao Feng suddenly lying next to Duan Yuche’s name.
Not only that, Du Pengfei, who was only 1.65 metres tall, was assigned to Cao Feng’s original seat, at the very last row at the back of the classroom wall.
Eh?
When did he change it?
Ma Xiaobo was at a loss and couldn’t figure out what was going on. He obviously couldn’t have Du Pengfei, who was 1.65 metres tall and somewhat short-sighted, in that seat, so he quickly replaced him with a taller person.
*
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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It took about ten minutes to walk to the bus station outside the campus.
Cao Feng headed over and ran into classmate He Tiantian. She was a boarding student at the school, and usually went home once a week.
“Cao Feng, are you taking the 733 too?”
“En.”
“Which stop do you get off at?”
Cao Feng said: “Linquan Avenue.”
“Oh oh, east of the city, Huishan Lake is over there.”
Cao Feng nodded. Huishan Lake was just behind their villa. He would go buy vegetables from the vegetable market in the mornings, and liked to run along that route.
He Tiantian found that talking to him was just like talking to a boring squash, he would only answer “En”, “Ah”, and “Yes” when prompted. He was a complete conversation ender.
She racked her brains and thought of another topic: “Oh, by the way, how is your online friend doing?”
Cao Feng’s head was empty for a second, and then he remembered what she was referring to. He pursed his lips and said, “I haven’t talked to him yet.”
“That must be a very important friend.”
He made a low “En” sound.
He Tiantian: “Then how about this? Add me as a friend, and if you don’t know what to say, then just send me a message.”
“But I…” I don’t have a QQ account.
Only then did Cao Feng realise that his lies were full of plotholes. He paused and said, “I can’t connect to the Internet on my mobile phone. Give me an account number. I’ll go back and find it.”
He Tiantian immediately took out a pen and paper and wrote down her number: “This is my screen name, Murmurs On An Autumn Day.”
“Remember to add me. Don’t lose it!”
The two got on the bus and travelled together for five or six stops, then He Tiantian got off and got on another bus.
It was 6:30 when he reached home. As soon as he stepped through the door, he saw Duan Yuche lying on the sofa like he was yesterday, playing Initial D furiously. But Duan Yuche wasn’t playing well, and couldn’t even last a few minutes before Game Over.
Duan Shumin was cooking, Cao Feng had a sharp nose and smelled the aroma of stewed pig’s trotters with kelp.
“Cao Feng.” Duan Yuche called him over. “Come and play a round with me.”
Cao Feng sat down and took the console handed to him by his didi. “Weren’t you going to see Zhou Zeliang today?”
“I can’t go.” Duan Yuche looked a little angry, and shot Duan Shumin a look. “He won’t let me go.”
“I don’t think you should go either. When your foot injury heals and you can walk, gege will go with you to see him.” Cao Feng held the console, but he didn’t know how to use it. This console, which could connect to the TV, looked much more high-end than those arcades on the street.
“It’s like this. Look on the right, there’s the arrow key. Press up and it will…” Duan Yuche just gave him a little bit of guidance, and Cao Feng learned how to do it.
The two played against each other for a few rounds. Duan Yuche always lost very quickly, but he didn’t get mad at all when he lost, only dropping his console and saying that he didn’t want to play anymore.
Probably because Duan Shumin hadn’t let him go out, the child was throwing a tantrum again. After eating dinner, he went back and hid in his room.
Cao Feng remembered that he needed to register a QQ account, and still went to find him: “Xiao Che, can you teach me how to register on QQ?”
Duan Yuche was still messing with that “Criminal Suspect” jigsaw puzzle, and said, “Okay. Come in, I’ll teach you.”
It wasn’t that Cao Feng didn’t know how to do it, he just wanted to take the opportunity to talk to his didi about That.
After entering the room, Cao Feng locked the door.
Duan Yuche turned on the computer, connected to the Internet, and clicked to register: “Fill in the information. Your birthday?”
Cao Feng: “1988, February 19th.”
“You don’t need to fill in the actual date, everyone on the Internet lies.” Duan Yuche casually filled in 1956 for him.
“Won’t that be fifty years old?”
“It’s online, anything goes. You can also set your gender to female, and use a cuter profile picture.”
Cao Feng: “…”
Duan Yuche: “Hey, what’s your screenname going to be?”
“Name…” Cao Feng thought for a while. “Facing The Ocean.”
He liked Haizi’s poems very much.
“Okay…how do you spell Yi An Mian, Chao, and Ci Ao Chao? You type.” His grasp of pinyin was not good, and he often encountered words that he couldn’t spell, so when he chatted with others he would just use English.
Cao Feng set up the information, and asked him: “Do you usually go online…and chat with people a lot?”
“Not much, only when I’m bored in class.”
“I mean,” Cao Feng asked tentatively. “A stranger.”
“I’ll chat with them too, say hi or something.” He used to really like chatting with strangers online, often pretending to be an adult, and playing different roles each time; sometimes a fifteen-year-old high school girl, sometimes a working adult with children, his imagination was very rich. On the Internet, no one knew who he was.
After returning back to China, he no longer had this habit.
Cao Feng asked again: “Then…do you talk more with men, or with women?”
Duan Yuche glanced over at him.
“I mean,” Cao Feng hurriedly explained. “Do you like men…or…” He faltered, not knowing what to say.
Duan Yuche was quite at a loss and couldn’t understand what he meant at all.
Cao Feng pinched his palm hard with his fingers and took a few deep breaths. He reached out to take over the mouse, and clicked on the internet history: “That day…I clicked in and saw this.”
He clicked on the webpage, and the forum changed to a new page. This time there were only two people, but there were still both men, a blond man leaning naked in the arms of another man. The blond man had beautiful facial features, but anyone could tell what gender he was.
Duan Yuche didn’t expect that Cao Feng would find this. He was stunned for a moment, and it was only after a few seconds that he said, “Why did you look through my browsing history?”
“Xiao Che, don’t get me wrong, I was looking for resources and thought this was it. Ge didn’t mean it, don’t be mad, don’t be mad, I didn’t tell anyone!”
Duan Yuche’s expression became a little irritable, and felt that it was difficult to explain: “Didn’t I tell you the other day, the gege who lived next door to me, Vic, disappeared. He used to like to visit this forum. I just clicked in to see if I could find any clues that he might have left behind.”
The truth was much easier to accept than what Cao Feng imagined. He was relieved, but he still felt something was wrong: “Then, that Wei…Wei Ke Duo, he likes…he likes this kind of thing, isn’t he…”
“You can’t accept it?”
“I……”
“Let me ask you, do you have any prejudice against him? That is, towards gay people?” Duan Yuche looked at his expression, and finally understood why he was acting weird these two days.
“I don’t, I just…ge is uncultured, I haven’t seen it before, I think it’s a bit, not very good…but I can try to understand.”
Duan Yuche felt that he was uncivilised: “This is normal, it’s not as bad as you think. Foreign countries are very liberal.”
Cao Feng fell into deep thought: “Overseas is all…boys liking boys?”
“It’s not that either. Vic’s father believes in the XXX religion. According to their teachings, homosexuals should be burned to death. It seems that Vic ran away from home for this reason, but over there, this is a normal thing, don’t discriminate.”
“I…don’t discriminate.” Cao Feng’s emotions were very turbulent. “Didi, then, you and that Vic, you have a good relationship?”
“We grew up together, um, just…‘kids who played on rocking horses together’. Childhood sweethearts, yes, sweethearts.” Duan Yuche didn’t know that he used the wrong word, and felt quite proud of himself, thinking that his literary skills were remarkable.
Cao Feng’s heart sank to the bottom of the valley.
hi everyone! thank you for your patience with this update, things have been hectic for me irl. i finally got a full-time job, so while i will have less time overall, i will have a regular schedule, and i’m going to be aiming to get back in the swing of translating.
thanks for the hard work.
misunderstanding is a bit funny though😂
haha, it is pretty funny! poor cao feng, duan yuche doesn’t even know how much he’s suffering. thank you for reading + commenting ! <3
Ah! I’ve caught up qwq
Thank you for picking this up and for all your hard work <3 also- congrats on the job!!
thank you so much for the congrats and for reading ! <33 i hope you’ve enjoyed this story so far !