If just a mere four days ago, someone had told Xu Wang he’d be sharing a room with Wu Sheng, not in bunk beds like in the student dorms, and without observation from any roommates; just the two of them men, staring at each other, he would’ve fantasised a hundred different scenarios, complete with thunder and fire in a million different combinations.
And now that said fantasy had become reality… he was so exhausted he could barely lift a finger. All he wanted to do was fall onto the mattress and sleep to his heart’s content.
Drive? Well, it’s not safe to drive when you’re fatigued, so that had to wait until he replenished his energy!
Xu Wang forced his way to the bathroom, his eyelids getting heavier by the minute. He was already halfway there when he remembered to say to Wu Sheng, “You’re not in a hurry to use the bathroom are you? I’m gonna wash my face.” It was more of a heads-up than a question, as he kept walking without turning around.
He took Wu Sheng’s silence as an affirmation and walked into the bathroom. Three minutes later, after he’d splashed some cold water across his face and brushed his teeth, he came out to see Wu Sheng squatted in a corner, studying a tall hiking bag.
“Isn’t that Xiao Kuang’s bag?” Xu Wang asked, walking over curiously.
When they’d come back to the room, the four of them were still so horrified by the front desk lady’s amnesia that they hadn’t even noticed there was something in the corner of the room, and quite frankly, the matter of Kuang Jinxin’s missing bag felt like it happened in the last century.
“Mm, it’s Xiao Kuang’s,” said Wu Sheng, “it’s the same as your pocket knife. In the second before we entered Owl, it got left behind.” He opened the bag and stared at it without digging through.
Xu Wang stood behind him and peered over his shoulder at the bag’s contents. At the top were a few daily necessities, and there were snack bags visible just beneath them.
Evidently, this was just a simple “camping” bag like Kuang Jinxin had claimed; there was nothing dangerous in it at all. And yet it still got left behind…
“Was it because it’s too big?” Xu Wang couldn’t find any issue of the object besides its offending size.
“Probably.” Wu Sheng sat there, deep in thought.
Xu Wang knew that he was entering this new data into his brain so that he could use it in the future if correlating data were accumulated, to reach new conclusions. There was a whole hacker nation within Wu Sheng’s mind—Xu Wang had thought this since high school.
In comparison, all he had was his mouth. To dispel the awkward silence, he said, “You and Xiao Kuang need to take down some notes from each other’s books.”
Wu Sheng turned around, confused.
“The two of you are completely opposite extremes,” Xu Wang continued, shooting a glance at Wu Sheng’s minimalist laptop bag. “He could fit practically the whole world in his bag, but yours got full after putting in just a laptop, right?”
Wu Sheng stood up and raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that?” he asked in an inexplicable tone.
Suddenly, that cliche line from every arrogant CEO idol drama ever flashed across Xu Wang’s mind—Congratulations on successfully drawing my attention. He took an unconscious step back.
His heart missed a beat, then came back pounding like a haphazardly galloping deer. He did his best to maintain his composure as he watched Wu Sheng go grab his bag in huge, long strides. Wu Sheng placed the bag on the table, unzipped it, then began taking out its contents on by one:
Laptop.
USB.
External hard drive.
Memory card.
External battery.
Kindle.
Headphones.
A bunch of cables that all looked exactly the same.
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.
A small pack of what looked to be shockproof clothing and necessities…
At last, Wu Sheng raised his eyes and smirked. “Never underestimate an engineer’s laptop bag,” he said, shaking his head.
Xu Wang: “…” He stood there like a fool, his heart still palpitating like crazy.
Wu Sheng looked down at his equipment with satisfaction. Then, after digging around for a while, he came up with a box that was about the size of a palm. Curious, Xu Wang stretched his neck to take a look and found it to be a small, opaque box with a red cross symbol on top.
“You brought a medical emergency case too?” Xu Wang asked in astonishment. “When did you start living so refined?”
“It’s called being better safe than sorry. There were bears in the first stage, who knew what would’ve been in the second stage? I never pretend I’m invincible.”
“I guess, that’s pretty meticulous of you. You’re the best.”
“But it’s still pretty extraneous. I mean after all, it’s hard for someone as agile and smart as I to get hurt, so I wouldn’t ever need it.”
“….”
He already praised him, but why didn’t that stop him from getting assaulted by that pretentious bullshit!
“Whatever, I should just give it to those who need it more.” Wu Sheng sighed, then went to stuff the medical box into Xu Wang’s hands. There was an excruciatingly exaggerated look of wistfulness on his face.
Xu Wang grimaced. The “gift” seemed more like a curse. “I, don’t, need, it, either.”
Head tilted, Wu Sheng asked innocently, “So you like getting attacked over the shoulder by bears?”
“…” Xu Wang, KO’ed.
__
Five minutes later.
Xu Wang lay on the bed, stripped naked, wondering how in the world he had ended up like this. He remembered that Wu Sheng had discovered Kuang Jinxin’s hiking bag. How had they gone from that to Wu Sheng helping him changing the dressing on his wound?
“Not bad, it’s not too deep,” Wu Sheng remarked after stripping off the old bandages.
Xu Wang rolled his eyes. He swore he didn’t hear an ounce of concern in the other man’s voice. “Sorry for disappointing you.” He waited for Wu Sheng to respond, but instead, his would was suddenly assaulted by something ice-cold. He sucked in a breath of cold air and cursed, “Bro, are you putting on iodine or are you getting revenge?!”
“‘One must withstand the bitterest of hardships to rise up in life.’”
“Do you seriously think that applies to this situation?!”
Wu Sheng ignored him. “I now know why there are less people willing to be samaritans these days,” he commented candidly, all the while applying iodine in circles around the edges of the wound. “It’s not that there aren’t any samaritans around, but that it’s harder to do good,” he sighed.
His sigh was laced with bitterness of having a good deed go unrecognised, with frustration at not being understood, and also a trace of superiority at returning insult with kindness. By putting himself up on the pedestal in every aspect possible, it made it easy for his opponent to be emotionally manipulated.
Taking advantage, biting the hand that feeds, not to mention using him for manual labour (iodine application)… Xu Wang shut his mouth, wilting as his conscience took a hit.
As the conversation—if bickering counted as conversation—ended and the room descended into silence, it became so quiet that you could almost hear time passing by. All the while, Wu Sheng kept applying iodine to Xu Wang’s wound in a not-so-gentle manner.
“Not-so-gentle” was a subjective opinion; in truth, after the initial chill, Xu Wang hadn’t minded Wu Sheng’s application method at all. It was cold and refreshing and felt quite nice. In his position, he was unable to turn around to observe Wu Sheng’s movements or expression. All he could do was rest his chin on the pillow, obediently acting out his role as the patient.
Unfortunately, he was a patient with a lot of anxieties brimming inside, and thus he was unable to maintain peace and serenity for long. He felt that if he didn’t say something, his anxieties would become noticeable and caught by the person sitting over his back. Which would be a disaster, because he then wouldn’t be able to look the guy in the eye for the next two lifetimes.
“Say…” Xu Wang fidgeted around, breaking the silence.
Before he could proceed, a certain someone let out a dissatisfied sound. “Stop moving.”
Considering that his shoulder was still under the mercy of that certain someone, Xu Wang stopped his motions and lay obediently still, although his mouth continued voicing his train of thought. “Say, where do you suppose the next stage is?”
“We don’t have to expend effort thinking about it.” Wu Sheng carefully placed new bandages over Xu Wang’s wound. “Tomorrow-no-tonight when we go back in, we’ll get our new coordinates.”
“And we’ll get our rewards, huh?” Xu Wang rested his head on his forearms and pondered the future. “I wonder what items we’ll get this time.”
Wu Sheng could discern the genuine anticipation in his voice and seemed genuinely mystified by it. “What does it matter? Either way it’s not going to decrease the difficulty of the stage. It’s just a cup of water against a flaming cart.”
“…” And just like that, Xu Wang’s barely-sprouted attempt at a proper conversation was shoved back into the dirt. He wasn’t opposed to pragmatism, but being pragmatic doesn’t mean splashing yourself with a bucket of cold water with everything you say! That shitty place didn’t offer a salary or insurance; the reward was the only thing to look forward to at all. If they weren’t allowed to be ecstatic about it, how were they even supposed to live?
“Hey, later I think you should go next door and ask Xiao Kuang to come back.”
“Lww?”
“Kjixlcu klat sbe gfvemfr ws ilofrqjc.”
“…”
From where Wu Sheng was sitting, all he could see was the back of Xu Wang’s head, which was enough for him to discern that the head of the sports committee was unhappy and this “student council” meeting was about to break up.
Several seconds of silence later.
The completely disheartened head of the sports committee heard the class representative say in a very curious, very sincere manner, as if the topic was of utmost importance, “So what kind of items do you think there will be?”
And the head of the sports committee felt much better.
Sports leader: “I bet it’s some freaky shit again!”
“Hmm…” In the class representative’s voice was an obvious hint of his desire to get out of the doghouse. “I think so too.”
Satisfied, Xu Wang decided, Good, I can still work with this class representative for another five hundred years.
Having placed the final bandage on, Wu Sheng patted Xu Wang on the back. “It’s done.”
The contact tickled, which made Xu Wang let out an unexpected yelp, but he regretted the sound as soon as it came out of his mouth, because he was 100 percent sure that it would incite a bunch of unnecessary snarking along the lines of, “are you made out of tofu,” or “stop being so dramatic.” But there was no sound at all; when he looked back, Wu Sheng was already almost in the bathroom.
As if sensing Xu Wang’s gaze, Wu Sheng stopped suddenly when he had one foot through the door. He turned and glared at Xu Wang intensely.
As they stared at each other, the air went still.
At last, Xu Wang understood and let out a quiet “thank you.”
Wu Sheng’s eyes relaxed and he waved his hand. “Don’t get so worked up over it.”
Wu Sheng showered for nearly twenty minutes; he expected Xu Wang to be long lost in slumber by the time he came out, but as he approached the bed, he found him staring up at the ceiling deep in thought, almost as if he were pondering the secrets of human existence.
“What are you thinking about?” Wu Sheng walked to his own bed and pulled the sheets aside.
“Why didn’t it disappear?” Xu Wang asked. It was hard to tell whether he was answering or just talking to himself.
“Why didn’t what disappear?” Wu Sheng prompted.
Xu Wang flipped over to his side and stared at him, looking like a child at a sleepover whispering into the night. “The item, how come it didn’t disappear?”
“Cao Chong Weighs an Elephant?” Wu Sheng, who was aware of the fact that it hadn’t been able to be used, guessed, “It probably couldn’t be used because the proper circumstances weren’t met. For example, you don’t have enough tasks submitted, or it wasn’t the right stage, or some other prerequisite.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Xu Wang shook his head. “I mean I also got a migraine, but when I entered Owl, my stationery box wasn’t empty. I didn’t lose any items.”
“You called the cops?”
“No. At midnight when the lady came knocking, I had the thought of opening the door, wanting to let her witness us being sucked in and then call the cops for us. As I thought that, I got a splitting headache.”
“But you didn’t open the door in the end.” Wu Sheng lay down on his side as well, facing Xu Wang. “Wanting to do something and actually doing it are different things.”
“My intention was to do it though. It’s not any different from Xiao Kuang and Qian Ai calling the cops. And I got a headache as a warning too.”
“They kept their intentions to call the cops after they got their headache, did you continue trying to open the door?”
“Well, no.”
“Then there is a difference,” Wu Sheng replied. “In programming, if you send a command, it’s out there. But if you don’t input a command, it’s not. A command won’t apply just because you intend to apply it.”
“You’re using engineer thinking,” Xu Wang retorted.
Wu Sheng yawned. “How do you know the world of Owl isn’t just one giant program?”
“A program?” Xu Wang murmured.
“It’s just an analogy,” Wu Sheng said. “Every world operates by its own logic. Here we have the laws of nature and societal laws; similarly, Owl must have its own laws. We just temporarily haven’t figured out what they are.”
“I’m going nuts. We have to pass stages, figure out the rules, battle other teams, and now we’re supposed to investigate its logic…” Xu Wang let out a heavy breath. He didn’t even have the energy left for lamentation. “When I buy lottery tickets, I never win, but when it comes to shit like this, I really stumble upon one after another.”
He thought Wu Sheng would agree with him, except there came no reply from the neighbouring bed. After a while, Xu Wang looked over and found Wu Sheng with a calm expression on his face, no trace of resentment or anger whatsoever.
“You don’t think this sucks?” Xu Wang asked seriously.
“My lifestyle is a complete mess now, I don’t even know what sleep is anymore, and my career has been interrupted, but…” Wu Sheng studied him in silence for a beat, then he smiled. “It’s not that bad.”
Xu Wang stared at the smile on Wu Sheng’s face disbelievingly for nearly a whole minute before finally accepting that he was being serious.
This reminded him of a time in high school when Wu Sheng had ranted that the questions on an exam were way too easy; so easy that they could be answered for full marks without even actually studying, which meant the exam couldn’t accurately determine how good a student was, which made the process of writing the exam incredibly boring and pointless.
Xu Wang had no idea how an exam could be anything other than boring and pointless, but the teacher clearly took in his advice, because the next time they had an exam, the difficulty went from level 1 to 100 instantaneously for the sake of one irksome little ‘teacher’s pet’; the last question was so difficult that Xu Wang couldn’t even understand the question itself. Wu Sheng hadn’t been able to come up with an answer for it within the time limit, and in the end, he didn’t earn any points from it.
Later, as the teacher was going through the test questions, she paused at the last question. Instead of explaining it, she first lectured that even if certain students were good at studying, it was important to remain humble and grounded rather than arrogant. Before she could go on however, Wu Sheng had raised his hand and said he figured out the answer. The teacher helplessly invited him up to the blackboard, upon which he listed three different solutions to the problem. He’d even marked out that the last solution he provided wasn’t a studied formula and was “for reference only.”
Even now, Xu Wang believed that the teacher had been a saint for not whipping him on the spot.
“What are you thinking about now?” It bothered Wu Sheng slightly that Xu Wang could get distracted so easily in the middle of a conversation with him.
Xu Wang forced himself back to the present and sighed at Wu Sheng. “I was thinking, why do you like solving difficult questions and overcoming difficult stages so much?” he asked, uncharacteristically serious. “Isn’t it better to just live easily in relaxation? Being content is the key to happiness, you know.”
“Actually I’ve never understood that,” Wu Sheng said. “If you’re already content, how is that interesting? If you’re not content, you have a direction to work towards, and you get happiness from stepping up the ladder, no?”
“…Never mind, the world of people with high intellect is beyond my comprehension.” Xu Wang gave up and flipped over to face the other side so the sight of Wu Sheng wouldn’t irk him even more.
“You don’t need to understand,” came the amicable voice from the bed over, “just admire.”
Xu Wang: “Goodnight!”
Thank you for the chapter! Man if I had a classmate that caused the exam to become even harder than it needed to be I would have cornered them and beaten them up 🗿🗿🗿
+1 if Wu Sheng had me as a classmate, he would’ve experienced retribution not from the gods but from me alone 💀
thanks for the chapter <3
Ah, Wu Sheng needed a cold shower after treating Xu Wang! 😂
I really like this story, actually. It is interesting, well translated and it doesn’t give me a headache; at most, I want to cover my eyes and peak through my fingers to continue reading. A really good read, I’m excited for more!
Thank you for the chapter!💕
».. his would was suddenly assaulted by something ice-cold.« his wound..
I can understand why XW wants to beat up WS sometimes lololol
Thx for the ch ٩(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )و
It’s strange knowing from the beginning they’re both interested in each other but they ignore the tension because of their differences. I’m interested to know what will finally make them crack. The daily life and death situations haven’t worked yet.