Ding‑dong… Ding‑dong…
Carrying his schoolbag, Zhang Wuyong stood at the door and pressed the doorbell a few times.
Light flickered past the peephole. A moment later, the door opened.
"Useless," Zhu Zhengwen called, pulling it wider for him.
"Aunt Zhu, there are some things I don't understand. I wanted to ask Tongtong to tutor me," he said.
"Come in." She set out a pair of slippers for him, then called toward her daughter's room, "Tongtong, you don't need to go looking for him anymore."
There was no response from inside.
"Did you two have a fight?" she asked.
"Not really," Zhang replied, scratching his head.
"It's fine, go on in."
In her eyes, Zhang was also a child she had watched grow up.
He walked over to Zhao Yutong's door and peered inside.
She was sitting at her desk with her back to him, doing homework without so much as a glance in his direction.
Her room held a 1.2‑meter single bed with a pink mattress and a teddy bear on the headboard, its ears tied with a pink bow. A tall bookshelf stood beside it, crammed with books. Her desk sat by the window, with a small green plant in one corner.
The ceiling light above had a five‑petaled floral lampshade.
Zhang remembered that the light in her room had three color settings—bright white, warm white, and warm yellow—that she could adjust as needed.
He did not know if all girls' rooms were this tidy, but at least Tongtong's room looked like this.
Back in the second semester of their second year of junior high, he had even slept in that bed with her once. By then, they had already been very close. That night, her mother was working overtime and did not come home, and the entire building happened to lose power.
Tongtong had been frightened and called him over. They were still young then, so nothing inappropriate happened.
They lay at opposite ends of the bed, talking until late. By dawn, Zhang was fine—only to discover that Tongtong, on the other end, had fallen asleep hugging his foot and nibbling on it.
"Tongtong," he called softly, pulling a stool over to her desk and sitting down.
"What are you doing here?" she asked stiffly, still angry, without turning her head.
He set his crutch to one side and placed his schoolbag on his lap.
Opening it, he took out an assortment of snacks—chocolate, jelly, sesame candied hawthorn, sandwich biscuits.
He had bought the sesame candied hawthorn outside the supermarket from an old lady carrying the same kind of pole he remembered from years ago.
Tongtong glanced at the growing pile of snacks he spread out in front of her.
"It's my fault," Zhang said, apologizing sincerely.
"Who cares whether you're at fault?" she shot back. "Don't you have plenty of people helping you with homework? What are you doing here?"
"I wasn't really asking them to teach me," Zhang said, beginning his improvised explanation. "It was a ritual. I saw online that if you get twenty people of the opposite sex to tutor you, you'll have good luck on the college entrance exam. I wanted to try it."
Tongtong straightened her slender back and turned to stare at him. "Are you stupid? You actually believe that?"
"Doing it doesn't guarantee it'll work, but if you don't do anything, it definitely won't," Zhang replied. "It's like praying at a temple before the exam. It might not help, but you still go, right?"
She looked at him as though he were an idiot. "So just for that, you went around asking girls to tutor you?"
"What else would I do?" he said. "If it were really just about studying, and someone's grades are better than all of theirs, I'd just ask you. Why would I go to them?"
He pulled out a box of pineapple jelly. "Don't be mad. I'm here to apologize. Here, have this."
Her mind told her his explanation was ridiculous, but, annoyingly, it also kinda made sense.
Otherwise, his behavior simply couldn't be explained.
She pursed her lips, her anger easing a little, accepted the jelly, and tore off the lid.
Zhang found a small plastic spoon and handed it to her. "Eat more. There's plenty here."
"That kind of weird trick is useless," she said, trying to talk sense into him. "You'd be better off spending that time studying instead of messing around."
"With my grades, only weird tricks might help," Zhang sighed. "Ordinary effort isn't enough."
"The problem is, those tricks are useless," she replied, scooping up jelly with the little spoon.
Thinking of the Supreme Dragon‑Slaying Blade, he had to admit she was right. It was indeed useless—at least when it came to the college entrance exam that would decide his future.
Sure, he could imagine summoning the Supreme Dragon‑Slaying Blade into the exam room, shocking everyone present and seizing a chance to cheat.
But with cameras watching every angle, even if he drew the invigilator's attention for a moment, there was no way to cheat successfully.
Once she finished the jelly, Zhang took out the sesame candied hawthorn. "This is for you too."
"I bought it at the entrance to our complex, from the same old lady who used to sell it. I remember you really liked these."
"When you finish this skewer, you'll forgive me, right?"
She cast him a disgruntled look. "Who has time to be angry with you?"
Even so, she accepted the candied hawthorn.
Zhang pulled his test papers from his bag and laid out the ones handed out that day, working through his homework beside her.
After writing for a bit, he suddenly stopped and stared at the air in front of him.
[Ding! The host has successfully 'silenced' Zhao Yutong, direct disciple of the Second Peak of Rongyang Immortal Sect. Mission complete. Points +50.]
[Host's current total points: 310. Every 300 points may be exchanged for one random card. Exchange now: Yes / No.]
Zhang turned his head to look at Zhao Yutong.
She was wearing pale yellow pajamas printed with little ducks and had a pink headband pushing back her hair.
One of the top buttons of her collar was undone, revealing a slim, delicate collarbone beneath her fair neck.
Lower down, the gentle curve of her chest was faintly visible, tapering into a slender waist, her legs pressed neatly together under the desk.
She held the sesame candied hawthorn in her left hand and a black pen in her right, chewing quietly as she worked through her homework.
The bright red candied fruit brushed against her rosy lips again and again, appearing and disappearing with each bite, a sight that tugged at his heart.
Sensing his gaze, she turned toward him.
With her mouth full of candied hawthorn, she did not speak, but simply stared back questioningly.
Zhang smiled, looked away, and lowered his head, appearing to study the exam paper.
In reality, his attention was on the task panel only he could see.
The "silencing" mission had been marked complete—just like that.
So… had she been silenced or not?
And so the points were for drawing cards after all.
It really was like that game where 160 crystals could be traded for a single "fate."
His broken system, however, demanded 300 points for one random card.
The names "points" and "random card" sounded terribly cliché.
But at least now he finally knew what those points were for.