Bite Your Fingertips

28th -【A person covered by me】

 

After sucking two drops of blood, Chu Yu quickly relaxed his jaw and worriedly asked, “Lu Shi, does it hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

Lu Shi closed his eyes, rested his fingertip on Chu Yu’s lips, and asked him in a husky voice, “Want more?”

His voice was softly drawn out, vaguely giving off a sense of tenderness.

Chu Yu still remembered how his bite had hurt the other person last night and felt very apologetic, so he hurriedly answered, “It’s enough, really, I’m not hungry anymore.”

Hearing this, Lu Shi opened his eyes and uttered a nasally sound in reply. “Mm.”

He lazily lay on the bed, his entire person resembled a cat with sheathed claws basking in the sun. He didn’t want to move and only his fingertips pressed against Chu Yu’s lips, stroking one moment and unmoving the next, without the slightest intention of distancing.

Chu Yu’s lips were kneaded until they itched and he instinctively wanted to bite.

But he knew that he seemed to have consumed a bit too much blood in the past two days, and was quite worried that one day while solving questions, Lu Shi would solve and solve and just straight up faint. That was why Chu Yu kept telling himself in silence that he mustn’t bite if not necessary and severely restrained himself.

Unfortunately, Lu Shi appeared to be deliberate. His lips were rubbed until they were a little numb, and only then did the other open his eyes and sit up, glancing at the lamp that was lit.

“Did you finish the questions?”

“Finished it!”

Lu Shi got up.

Unlike usual, his hair was a bit messy from the nap and he exuded an indolent aura from head to toe. His large, black T-shirt which covered his body made his back appear thin.

Standing in front of the desk, Lu Shi stretched out his hand to pull out the chair and then sat down, casually picked up a pen, and began making corrections.

Chu Yu then lightly breathed in and out.

His marking speed was fast for it took less than a minute.

Lu Shi announced the result, “Of twenty questions, two were correct. Your success rate is 10%.”

He was about to say ‘don’t cry’ when he saw Chu Yu release a sigh and pat his chest as if relieved from a burden. “Sure enough, I’m still very smart, I even got two correct!”

“Even?”

“Yeah!”

Chu Yu put his hand on his chin, very easily satisfied. Radiant with delight, he stated, “A qualitative leap! I could only perfectly avoid the correct answers before!”

Taking back what he was about to say, Lu Shi followed up with praise. “Hm, you’re indeed very smart.”

—

Chu Yu hadn’t read a comic book in a long time.

He reached into his desk compartment, felt around for the cover of a comic book, then hesitated before gritting his teeth and retracting his hand.

The closer the monthly exams neared, the more anxious Chu Yu got and he constantly thought of something else to divert his attention.

But he was also very self-conscious— he had to have a little bit of self-control. Once he took out that comic book, his discipline would be broken, and most likely on the day of the exams, he wouldn’t even want to pick up the pen or flip the book open.

Zhang Yueshan heard Chu Yu sigh several times, bringing the tip of his pen close to puncturing his draft paper. He advised, “School Flower, calm down, won’t you? Just take a look at those notebooks Lu-Shen gave you! Can’t you see the halo of the study god shining upon them! With Lu-Shen covering you, what else is there to be nervous about?”

As soon as he said this, he beat his chest in jealousy. “God fucking damn, Lu-Shen personally compiled these notes! Personally!”

Chu Yu’s spirit weakly left him. He lay on his stomach and couldn’t get up. “A top student won’t understand an underachiever’s pain!”

Amused by his expression, Zhang Yueshan didn’t advise him any further and looked behind Chu Yu. “Huh, where’s Lu-Shen?”

“Dream-Ge is terribly addicted to basketball and Lu Shi doesn’t need to review, so he was simply dragged away to play.”

Chu Yu was in a daze for a while, then suddenly remembered something. He took out a little crucifix from his school bag.

It was a small crucifix that didn’t even reach half the size of his palm.

Zhang Yueshan was curious. “What’s that for?”

Chu Yu didn’t answer and only put his hand into the bag again to take out a thumb-sized Virgin Mary ornament1.

Immediately after, a Manjushri2, Maitreya3, Jade Emperor4, WenQuXing5 and Taishang Laozi6 appeared on the table one after another.

The seven idols were lined up in front of Chu Yu.

Chu Yu frowned and began struggling. “Which one should I worship?”

Before Zhang Yueshan had time to react, he heard Chu Yu say to himself, “Forget it, I’ll pay respect to all, I can’t be partial!”

After he finished saying that, he put his hands together and prayed, “In no particular idol order, oh great deities, impart within me your boundless power!”

After Chu Yu finished praying, he took out a bright red apple from his bag and placed it in front of the row of statues. “Please enjoy!”

Zhang Yueshan was stunned by these magical series of actions.

As Chu Yu finished giving an offering to the gods, he saw him intensely gaze at himself with a meaningful look; he wasn’t sure what to make out of the expression. “I- I need to do it too?”

Chu Yu nodded. “Of course! Sit in front of me so you’re within the range of the gods’ light of blessings. How could one apple be enough?!”

Zhang Yueshan thought about it and found his words reasonable. With so many gods, one apple definitely wasn’t enough to split between them, and so, he offered the cream puffs he hadn’t finished eating in the morning.

Li Hua, who was writing an English essay, put aside his pen. “Me me me! I’m coming too!”

As he spoke, he rummaged through his bag for a long time and found a hazelnut chocolate bar. He put his hands on Chu Yu’s desk. “May the gods bless me!”

Fang Ziqi happened to be bringing his papers over to discuss problems with Zhang Yueshan and Li Hua. He saw this scene and slapped his forehead. “How clever! Why didn’t I think of this?”

He rushed back to his seat, grabbed a banana, and piously placed it on Chu Yu’s desk. Then he folded his hands together and closed his eyes in prayer. “Oh great gods, please bless me so I can advance again for five- no, just four extra ranks is enough for this test!”

Guan Yiyang deliberately passed by their group, glanced at the things arranged on Chu Yu’s table and with the raised corners of his eyes, he mocked, “Praying to gods and worshipping Buddha? Heh, is this because you’re well aware of your spicy chicken level? But, no matter how powerful these gods and Buddha are, I doubt they’ll be able to bless you with the right answers on the exam. Even with luck you can’t get anywhere near the top 220 of your grade.”

A corner of Chu Yu’s lips curled up as he was about to retort when he saw that Lu Shi, who had returned at some point, had come over and was standing behind Guan Yiyang. “Move, you’re in the way.”

When passing by Chu Yu’s desk, he took out a mint candy from his pocket and put it on the table. “For an offering.”

Chu Yu’s eyes were full of smiles. “Thank you, classmate Lu!”

Dream-Ge, who was hugging a basketball, followed behind Lu Shi covered in sweat. He saw the many random things on Chu Yu’s table and scoured around until he found a packet of tissues. “Hope the great gods don’t dislike it!”

Li Hua’s eyes were sharp. “Your tissue packet is covered in cute pink strawberries, Dream-Ge, are you being eyed by girls again?”

Dream-Ge raised his foot and kicked Li Hua’s chair. “Only you’d notice!”

He scratched the back of his head. “There was a pretty cute girl who handed it to Lu-Shen by the side of the court. Lu-Shen responded ‘thank you’ and left without even looking at her. I was afraid that the girl would feel too awkward and lose face, so I received it. Tsk, the tissues were unexpectedly sprayed with perfume and the smell made me sneeze three times!”

Li Hua and Zhang Yueshan burst into laughter.

Chu Yu turned to look at Lu Shi.

Lu Shi’s hair was slightly drenched. He put down the half-empty bottle of the mineral water he’d just drunk and handed Chu Yu a piece of loose-leaf paper. “Complete these ten questions.”

After two weeks, Chu Yu was already accustomed to it so he accepted it. “Okay, I’ll give it to you for marking when it’s done.”

Lunch break ended and the bell rang, but the room remained noisy.

Zhang Yueshan began to fill in the form for declaring intent to stay in school on National Day.

Chu Yu was the second last to fill the form while Lu Shi was last.

Seeing Lu Shi check the ‘stay in school’ option, Zhang Yueshan sat back in his seat and asked Chu Yu in a low voice, “Are you and Lu-Shen staying in school over November?”

Chu Yu was working on Lu Shi’s given questions and didn’t raise his head when he heard the question. “Yeah, aren’t we taking the test immediately after returning to school on October 8th? Lu Shi said it might as well be better to just not leave school at all.”

Moreover, Chu Yu didn’t really want to go home either.

His heart would always feel a bout of suffocation when imagining the scene of waiting for his exam results and then standing in front of his mother to let her know, and that he shouldn’t be given up on so easily.

His fingers that held his pen subconsciously clenched, making the pressure a little painful.

He was already so old, yet for the first time he wanted to accomplish something— wanted to prove himself this once.

Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to stop thinking about it. Chu Yu pressed down his heart and continued working on the problems. While doing them, he realized— this was really the most seriously he studied in his 17 years of life.

—

During the seven-day National holiday, almost half of the students in their class remained at school.

The classroom, library, and self-study room were all full of people, giving Chu Yu the illusion that it wasn’t a holiday at all.

During this period, He Zhihao called, asking him to come out and play. Chu Yu thought, I haven’t finished all the fucking questions, where would I even have the time to think about playing?

After rejecting him, he stared at the phone for a while, then Chu Yu moved his stiff fingers and continued doing questions.

On the afternoon of October 7th, the examination room arrangements were posted on the bulletin board. The first name was Lu Shi, in the first examination room, for the first place seat.

The distribution of the exam rooms for second year Class A was also very magical.

Most of the students in their class were very evenly distributed in the first and last two examination rooms. It was quite obvious that there was a huge gap in performance records.

Zhang Yueshan sat at the rear of the first examination room, while Li Hua and Fang Ziqi were both in the second examination room. As for Chu Yu, given that he blindly wrote in English last semester, he naturally would be taking the exam in the last test room.

1234

Chu Yu got up early the next morning.

He didn’t sleep well during the night. He kept dreaming a forgotten dream and was awakened by that dream just after five o’clock, his eyes remained open and he couldn’t sleep.

After a while of being in a daze, he really couldn’t fall asleep, so he simply took out the notebook beside his pillow and started reading it.

The review materials Lu Shi compiled for him were written in one notebook for each subject.

For more than half a month, he turned the pages of these notebooks until the rough edges rose.

Lying on the bed wrapped in a quilt, Chu Yu was inexplicably less panicked when he saw the cold, sharp handwriting of Lu Shi.

At seven o’clock, Chu Yu got out of bed.

After brushing his teeth, he picked up his phone and wanted to send Shi Yaling a message to tell her that his monthly exams were today.

But then he thought, even if he sent the message, his mother wouldn’t have the time to read it, right?

In the end, he decided to just forget it.

After getting dressed, Chu Yu opened his room’s door at the same time the door next to his opened.

The two headed towards the stairs.

There was nothing else to talk about along the way, so Chu Yu muttered the fill-in-the-blank poems and classical Chinese essays he memorized which would surely show up in the exam as Lu Shi had highlighted.

Lu Shi had his hands in his pockets and his head slightly lowered as he listened carefully, correcting him from time to time.

They hurried to the cafeteria for breakfast and walked to the school building after. Chu Yu’s examination room was on the fourth floor and Lu Shi’s was on the first.

“Then, I’ll go up.”

Lu Shi gave Chu Yu the black felt-tip pen and pencil in his hand.

Chu Yu was baffled and shook the mesh pencil case in his hand. “I brought pens.”

“During the exam, if you can’t calm down, just remember that this is a pencil shrouded in the aura of the study god.”

Chu Yu had his first laugh that morning, then lifted his chin. “Then what about me?”

“You’re a person covered by me.”

In the last test room, there were many of Chu Yu’s acquaintances, but He Zhihao was who he was most familiar with.

As soon as Chu Yu stepped into the doorway, he heard He Zhihao’s voice. “Our family’s Young Master Yu has arrived!”

Chu Yu scolded him with a smile, “Piss off, who’s your family? Is your face getting bigger?”

He Zhihao grinned and complained, “What were you busying yourself with when I invited you out during the holidays but you didn’t come?”

“Studying.”

“Holy shit!”

He Zhihao hurriedly dragged over a chair and sat next to Chu Yu. “Someone told me that you didn’t go home over the National Day holidays and were instead answering questions and memorizing texts at school every day. I thought he was fucking with me, but you really did?”

He lowered his voice. “Is this about that bet? That Guan Yiyang is too damn arrogant, isn’t he too full of himself? You don’t need to do it, just say the word because this young master knows 800 ways to make him cry and kneel down to call you father!”

Chu Yu thought for a while before remembering who Guan Yiyang was.

He shook his head. “Who cares about him saying father? If you have so much free time, it’s better to just use it to sleep more. Whether I study or not has nothing to do with Guan Yiyang. I’m studying because,” he paused, “forget it, you won’t understand either.”

“What won’t I understand?”

However, seeing that Chu Yu really didn’t care about that person at all, He Zhihao didn’t mention him again. “Alright, then after the monthly exam is over, us brothers will hang out again? It’s been a month since you started school and you haven’t been out once. That big sister Lin has been asking about you god knows how many times. Now they ask me every time we meet, ‘where’s Chu Yu, why don’t I see him?'”

Chu Yu computed in his heart and found that this was indeed the case so he nodded. “That should be fine, after the exam, I’ll make time to hang out every now and then.”

“Remember what you said, don’t go back on your words! I’ll call them right away and make a reservation!”

“Tell me once the time and place is set.”

Chu Yu looked at the time. There were still twenty minutes left before the exam so he drove the person away. “I’ll excuse myself then and seize this time to read a book.”

Ten minutes before the exam, the proctor asked them to hand over any books and miscellaneous items. After speaking, he used an envelope to open the sealed bag of test papers.

Chu Yu handed in his books and returned from the podium. Along the way, many students were wielding their pen as if it were flying to prepare cheat sheets.

Some wrote on their palms while others copied onto the table; all of them were extremely focused.

As soon as he was seated, someone poked him in the back with a pen.

Chu Yu turned around and found that it was someone he knew. They had been in the same class in his first year of high school and weren’t so familiar, but he seemed to be called Yang Zhenxiang.

Yang Zhengxiang whispered, “School Flower, I made many extra copies of my cheat sheet, would you like one?”

Very generous.

Chu Yu refused.

He thought in his heart— to be honest, I can recite everything written on the cheat sheets you’ve all made!

At that moment, Chu Yu felt that he was probably the most impressive boy in the entire examination room.

When the test papers were issued, Chu Yu was worried that he’d forget everything, so he first flipped to the back and filled in the blanks of the ancient poems.

He only reacted once he’d already finished filling them all out— damn, he’d actually memorized all of the poems on the test!

Sitting up straight and breathing slowly, Chu Yu inadvertently saw that the student sitting in front of him didn’t read the test. He’d picked up his pencil and took half a minute to fill out the scantron for the multiple-choice questions, then began staring blankly at the wall clock above the blackboard.

Meanwhile, the one on his left was writing an essay. He wrote a few words then changed to the next line, just like a prose poem. Not much time had passed, but he’d almost finished covering most of the page.

The one sitting on his right was the most formidable. He’d cut up three sheets of his drafting paper to fold a thousand paper cranes.

Not long after, a thousand paper cranes were piled upon his table.

As for the proctors, one sat behind the podium playing with their phone, and the other stood at the door of the room chatting with someone. Apparently, they weren’t the least bit afraid of students passing answers and copying— passing on answers back and forth wouldn’t just make flowers bloom on the test.

Chu Yu completed two multiple-choice questions a little impetuously.

Then he stared at the pen given to him by Lu Shi for a while before continuing to work on the problems.

As soon as the test paper needed to be handed in, Chu Yu also completed his essay.

He didn’t study the essay material very well, but Lu Shi had given him a lecture on the standard template. He’d memorized it and was able to write smoothly.

Exam time flew by quickly, and Chu Yu did his questions very slowly. He only managed to finish all of the exams at the last minute.

After finishing the final subject – English – Chu Yu felt as if he was already crippled waste.

He lay on the desk, not wanting to move his hand at all.

Not until someone bent their fingers and lightly tapped on his desk twice.

It was Lu Shi.

“Why did you come up?”

Chu Yu raised his eyes and looked at Lu Shi from below. He had no energy to speak and was completely drained.

Lu Shi’s examination room was on the first floor. The elevator would definitely be packed and he’d be unable to ride it, so he had to climb the stairs to go up.

“Let’s go.”

Seeing that Chu Yu wasn’t moving, Lu Shi stretched out his hand and put the pencil, ruler, and eraser into the mesh pencil case one by one, then stroked Chu Yu’s soft hair while he was at it. “Not going?”

Chu Yu stood up slowly.

After walking a few steps with Lu Shi, Chu Yu recalled something and said excitedly, “I actually did the English test seriously for the first time, and I even met the word count for the essay! And, and math! I actually knew a lot of the answers! Also, the integrated sciences were really, really, really moving! I followed what you said and basically did everything I could do well. If I didn’t understand something, I didn’t waste time looking at it since I wouldn’t be able to make sense of it anyway.”

“What about Chinese literature?”

“I filled all the spaces!”

Chu Yu was very elated along the way, telling that he’d forgotten a formula when he was doing physics and almost snapped his pen trying to recall it.

He also mentioned that the second question in mathematics was almost exactly the same as what Lu Shi had taught him. He’d definitely get full marks.

Then he complained about English composition. It was always about Li Hua1. How was it that Li Hua had so many foreign friends coming to China to play and even had numerous summer camps and sports competitions to participate in.

Lu Shi was very patient, walking beside Chu Yu, listening quietly, and answering with a line from time to time.

Chu Yu’s mouth eventually dried up from speaking. He paused and then remembered. “Today’s Thursday. I heard Old Ye say that they’d be working overtime to mark the exams so the results should be available tomorrow.”

There was tension and anxiety in his voice.

“Chu Yu.”

“Hm?”

Lu Shi stopped and lowered his eyes to look at him. “Promise me, no matter what the results are, you’re not allowed to cry.”

Chu Yu’s fur didn’t blow up this time.

He understood what Lu Shi meant.

“Okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The author has something to say:

Here’s a blotted out scantron in the shape of a heart as my love for you~2

1

We always have that teacher who likes to put their students’ names in exam problems or as an example.

2

this will probs be the last i will translate the author’s love. I’ll only translate it in the future if there’s important info. Though tell me if y’all want me to continue translating authors memos~