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CHAPTER 6

[Emotion can get in the way or get you on the way]

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Early in the morning of the day after he had met with Xue Lanfen in the library, Fu Xin looked at the wall clock hung on the door-side wall of the classroom. The morning bell was about to ring, signaling the start of the school day, but when Fu Xin looked at the back of the classroom, he noticed that Lin Tian was missing from his desk— even his bag couldn't be seen.

Except for the first day of the new school year, Lin Tian had promptly arrived in the classroom ten minutes before the first bell. But today, it was already past that time, and Lin Tian wasn't in the classroom.

Fu Xin wondered if Lin Tian was taking a day off.  'Is it related to why he wasn't there at the library yesterday?' he thought.  'Or maybe he's just running late.'

Lin Tian wasn't a stalker who needed to follow Xue Lanfen everywhere, but from what Fu Xin had seen in the past month, he was sure that Lin Tian had a very deep crush on Xue Lanfen. If he wasn't hanging out with his one friend outside the class, Lin Tian was always around Xue Lanfen. It made Fu Xin wonder if there was a special reason behind Lin Tian's absence.

The door to the classroom slid open, and Zhang Xioli walked inside. Immediately, the students took their seats, and their morning chatter turned into whispers.

"Good morning, class. Teacher Hao is busy with another matter, so I will head the class today. Take out your books, so we can get started," said Zhang Xioli. She wore a black top with sleeves made from a see-through floral material and a pewter-gray knee-length pencil skirt. Zhang Xioli had been coming to the school and would attend Teacher Hao's classes from the back of the room. She had taught two classes till now, but both times, she was guided by Teacher Hao. This was going to be her first independent class.

Fu Xin, who had been thinking about Lin Tian, had missed Zhang Xioli and looked around to see what others were doing. He saw they were taking out their books and did the same, but then he doubled back and noticed there were two more empty seats other than Lin Tian's.

Guo Qing and Ding Ting.

Fu Xin knew instantly why Lin Tian wasn't in the class, why he wasn't there at the library yesterday, and why Teacher Hao wasn't guiding a teaching intern like Zhang Xioli.

His speculations were proven correct when the three missing boys arrived at the class after the first class. They attracted attention instantly when everyone saw their bruised and swollen faces. Ding Tong even had a visible cut on his lip. Guo Qing's already round face looked like a steamed dumpling that had been colored blue in some spots. Then there was Lin Tian, who had only one injury, a right black eye, but it was so bad that the eye had swollen so much that he couldn't even see through it.

Three of them were instantly surrounded by the entire class and were bombarded with questions. However, they were met with a closed-off response, with neither three telling them anything about how they had gotten the injuries. They kept their mouths shut. Guo Qing even shouted at one persistent classmate who kept asking questions. But their silence didn't stop the people from gossiping about what had happened. Some people even came from other classes to have a look, and it was inevitable that the entire school was talking about the irregular incident.

Fu Xin waited for the crowd to clear before heading toward Guo Qing and Ding Tong, who dodged his gaze when they noticed him approaching him.

'They picked up a fight with Lin Tian because of me,' Fu Xin didn't even need to think when the reason behind their guilty expression came to him. But before he could confirm it, the next professor arrived, and Fu Xin had to return to his seat.

During the lunch break, Fu Xin cornered Guo Qing and Ding Tong on the school roof. He told them to follow him to the roof, and like baby ducklings, they followed him, not saying a word along the way.

"So... tell me what happened?" Fu Xin asked.

"... Lin Tian, that punk picked up a fight with us," Guo Qing said, and he looked everywhere but at Fu Xin as he said that.

Ding Tong spoke when Fu Xin looked at him. "We got him good, though. Y-You saw his eye? I was the one who gave him that. You should've seen him on his ass flapping around on the ground when I hit him— it was so pathetic that it was funny," said Ding Tong so awkwardly that even a chimp would see through it.

Fu Xin fixed them with a stare, and they both covered. "Now tell me the truth. Who hit first and why?" he asked. 

"We are not lying, Brother Xin," Guo Qing said. "Lin Tian hit us first." But from how he was staring, Fu Xin knew he was lying. So, Fu Xin turned to Ding Tong and stared at him silently.

The words couldn't leave Ding Tong faster, "Guo Qing hit first!"

"Ding Tong, you little shit!" Guo Qing glared at Ding Tong, which turned his bruised face uglier.

Fu Xin closed his eyes and groaned. It was the classic villain trope— the lackeys picking up a fight with the hero under the orders of the villain. But Fu Xin hadn't given any such order. He had even gone as far as to clarify the misunderstanding about him liking Xue Lanfen to make sure something like this never happened. Yet, it happened anyway.

"Why?" Fu Xin asked Ding Tong. He didn't forget to give Guo Qing a stern look.

"He was going to intrude at the library," Ding Tong said.

"So you started a fight with him for that? Are you two dead in the brain?!" Fu Xin threw his hands up exasperatedly. "Why did you two even try to stop him? It had nothing to do with you!"

"We thought—"

Fu Xin interrupted. "You thought I was spending time with Xue Lanfen and thought Lin Tian was going to disturb us, so you tried to stop him. Do you think I couldn't handle it on my own? I wouldn't have even needed to do anything; Xue Lanfen would've taken care of it out of annoyance." He sighed, "I told you there's nothing between Xue Lanfen and me, do get that in your mind."

Ding Tong and Guo Qing were no longer speaking or looking at Fu Xin. They had their eyes stuck to their feet and were fidgeting with their hands. Guo Qing's ears were so red they looked like they had been cooked raw.

Fu Xin looked at both of them, and his frustration softened. "You don't have to do any of this. I know that your parents must have forced you to act like you both do with me," Guo Qing and Ding Tong snapped their heads toward him with wide eyes, "you don't have to lick my shoes in fear that if you don't your family will suffer because of it. As long as you're civil with me and don't act like rude pricks, I don't care about the relationship between our families. You have my word as long as it is me, you will face no danger from me... I don't know about the other two, but when it comes to me, you can ignore me for all I care and it won't make a difference."

School social hierarchy was only one reason Guo Qing and Ding Tong followed around Fu Xin like lackeys. The other, more prominent reason was that the Guo family worked with the Fu's business in the city as a minor supplier and could easily be replaced, and the Fu family was the Ding family's business' largest client and basically their entire revenue source. Without the Fu family, both of their families would come down to the road.

"N-No, Brother Xin, it's not that," Ding Tong looked flustered.

Guo Qing was the same. "Yes, we just thought..."

Fu Xin sighed. It didn't look like they were going to believe him. He didn't blame them for not. One mistake from them and I could potentially derail their lives. 'Me saying something to my family might not do anything actually,' Fu Xin thought with an internal shrug.

"I will say this one last time, so listen, and listen well," Fu Xin decided to use the unnecessary incident to solidify what he had already said. "You don't interfere in my matters until I say so myself. Be it Lin Tian, Xue Lanfen, or anyone else, don't move a muscle unless I say so. So I will ask you two— do you understand?"

Guo Qing and Ding Tong nodded.

"Good, now cheer up," Fu Xin patted them on their shoulders. "Tell me what happened yesterday."

According to Guo Qing and Ding Tong, they knew Fu Xin was going to meet Xue Lanfen in the library, and it was a complete coincidence that as they were heading home, they saw Lin Tian heading toward the library. So they did what any lackey would do and stepped in his way to stop him.

"We weren't planning to fight him," said Guo Qing, his hands dug into his pockets, "but he was so annoying that I couldn't stop myself and pushed him... and things went south from there."

Ding Tong nodded in shame.

"You're telling me he insulted you into hitting him. Wow, you two... no offense, but that was supremely stupid." Fu Xin was stunned; he thought Guo Qing and Ding Tong swung fists to physically stop Lin Tian from going to the library, but it turned out that they had lost the battle of words and had switched to violence after the fact. Fu Xin couldn't help but grimace at the state of their faces. "You were two, and he was one. How did you look worse than him?" he asked.

Guo Qing and Ding Tong looked the most embarrassed they did the entire day.

"He knew martial arts or something," the usually confident and prideful Guo Qing said in what would be considered to be a mosquito-like voice for a loud man like him. "Even though he's scrawny and hits like a girl, he somehow dodged most of what we did and countered every time we missed."

"After a while, even those weak hits began to hurt," Ding Tong touched his face and hissed as he quickly removed his hand. "He definitely knew how to fight."

Fu Xin's eyes sharpened at the new information. Lin Tian had fought two people, one of whom was Guo Qing, who had a substantial weight advantage and still had won?

'He definitely has a system,' Fu Xin thought. 'His system must've given him martial arts proficiency.' Or how else Lin Tian, who was scrawny and weak, could fight against two and objectively win? It was definitely a system. Fu Xin was sure of it— and that made him feel bitter in the heart.

'His system is already giving him perks; mine acts like it doesn't even exist,' Fu Xin cried in his heart. What bothered Fu Xin even more was that if Lin Tian's protagonist status was due to the arrival of the system, then both he and Lin Tian had gotten their system at the same time, and yet Lin Tian had already gotten a gift in martial arts, and a possible gift in academics, which could be the reason behind Lin Tian's confidence in the bet he made in front of the entire class.

Guo Qing snorted with his arms crossed. "If we just had more time, we would've got him. He got lucky that the teacher interrupted us."

Fu Xin's eyes shone. "Did they make you call your parents?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Who came from Lin Tian's side?"

"It was his mother."

Fu Xin noted the fact in his memory. He didn't know anything about Lin Tian's family, so any little detail could prove helpful in the future.  'I should gather more information about Lin Tian...'

"Come, I will treat both of you to some food," Fu Xin said to his beat-up followers with a sigh. A reward after a tough talk was an excellent way to lift their spirit and reinforce his words in their mind.

 

While the start of the day had been rocky, the day after the lunch break was no different from any other. Teachers taught, students studied, and the time between the classes was spent chatting with friends and exchanging gossip.

Fu Xin, as always, paid attention in the classroom— to the teachers and to Lin Tian. After a month of observing Lin Tian, Fu Xin had gotten a good grasp on the hero's behavior in the classroom, so he wasn't surprised to see Lin Tian with his head bowed, resting on his desk. Lin Tian wasn't interested in the material taught in the class and would spend most of the time sleeping, passing his time by idle activities, or staring at Xue Lanfen. Despite that, no teacher bothered him as their attempts to stop his acts of laziness and wasting time through the means of public humiliation by calling him to the board to answer questions had been overcome by Lin Tian, who seemingly knew everything that was being taught, and could solve any problem thrown at him with ease. And would only call upon him once in a while to see if he could still solve the questions and recite concepts— which he did.

After a month of the same behavior, even Fu Xin had eased his observation of Lin Tian. It was boring to watch a man as he slept, doodled on his notebooks, and flipped through the books with a bored expression.

'No anomaly, that's good,' Fu Xin thought. He started packing his study material as only one lesson was remaining and his desire to leave school at the end of the school day made him ready to go when the last bell rang.

Fu Xin heard his name being called and saw Zhang Xioli standing at the classroom door. She had a stack of papers in her hand and was wearing a handbag on her shoulder.

"Yes, Teacher Zhang?" Fu Xin asked as he arrived at the door.

"Please distribute these to the class," Zhang Xioli handed the paper stack to Fu Xin. "These are homework assignments that I want to be completed when I come next week. That's Friday. I want you to collect them on Thursday and hand them to me first thing in the morning on Friday. There are a lot of questions, so tell everyone that a last-minute rush job won't work... I would tell them myself, but I'm getting late and have to leave urgently. Can I entrust you with this?" she asked.

"Yes, teacher. I will make sure everyone understands the assignment," Fu Xin said.

Zhang Xioli thanked him and then left. Fu Xin turned to the classroom and headed to Xue Lanfen's seat to tell her about the task. He spoke to her in English as promised, "Teacher Zhang has asked us to distribute this to the class. I will announce her instruction to the class, so please hand them out."

Xue Lanfen stared at him for a moment before saying, "Oh, when should we do it?"

Fu Xin frowned when he heard Xue Lanfen speak to him in Mandarin. Did she forget it?  "Let's do it now. Doing it after the last class will be problematic," he said.

"Okay, let's do it now." Xue Lanfen moved her hands to take the stack of papers, but Fu Xin pulled it back out of her reach.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, frowning.

"No, it's nothing."

"Do you not want to continue the only-English conversation that we decided on yesterday?"

Xue Lanfen didn't say anything, which made Fu Xin frown even more. And as he was about to ask further, he felt a gaze on him. He looked and saw Lin Tian look at him with a smirk, which with his black eye made him look really ugly.

'He said something to her,' Fu Xin thought. He looked at Xue Lanfen and saw that she wasn't looking at him, 'But what did he say?'

"Do you want to say something to me?" Fu Xin asked Xue Lanfen.

Xue Lanfen paused for a moment before shaking her head.

"Is that so, then let's finish this quickly before the teacher comes," Fu Xin said. Lin Tian had something to her, and it was clear it was about Fu Xin; from the looks of it, she believed Lin Tian. If she didn't want to confirm something about Fu Xin from the person himself, then he didn't want to associate with her.

'A pity... I thought we were becoming friends,' Fu Xin thought, and it did sting that he had lost his English partner. Even though she was the heroine, he wasn't going to lower himself to maintain a relationship with her. Even if it meant sacrificing an asset which was a positive relationship with the heroine.

'Shit!'

After the class ended, Fu Xin got up and headed out of the classroom. Today hadn't been a good day for him, and he wanted to leave the school to get some fresh air to clear his thoughts and think about the current situation.

As he was walking, Fu Xin heard a mocking voice behind him.

"You don't look so good."

Fu Xin turned back and saw Lin Tian walking behind him.

"It looks to me like you have constipation," Lin Tian sneered.

"And you look like you're halfway to a frog with that eye— real ugly... like ugly-ugly. Why don't you croak somewhere else," Fu Xin said.

Lin Tian harrumphed, "Half-way, huh.  Leave it to you, sending goons that couldn't even get a simple job done."

Fu Xin sighed. He felt something bubble up inside, and he tried to push it down, but Lin Tian's annoying face wasn't helping it. "Oh, believe me, sir! If I had sent goons, things would be much-much worse...  I find physical harm shallow; it just doesn't do the trick. If you want to go about things properly, then you don't send people to beat someone up— you send some enthusiastic gentlemen to say... a person's house so they could have a good long chat with their mother." Fu Xin paused and smiled at Lin Tian, "Huh... who knows, maybe it does do the trick."

"You bastard, don't you dare!" Lin Tian grabbed Fu Xin by the collar and slammed his back into the wall. "Don't speak of my mother... don’t even think about her, or I will gouge your eyes out! You hear me!"

Fu Xin slowly raised his hands and patted Lin Tian on his cheek. "See... I didn't even have to raise my voice and look at the result. Imagine what would happen if I put some effort into it."

Lin Tian swatted Fu Xin's hand. Fu Xin reciprocated by shoving him back. He fixed his clothes and said with a polite smile, "I don't know what problem you have with me, but I would appreciate it if you... you know... buzz off. Also, don't talk to me in public; I don't want people to think I'm associated with someone like you."

There were people in the hallway who were looking at Fu Xin and Lin Tian, whispering about their altercation. Lin Tian clicked his tongue and walked away but not before giving Fu Xin the stink eye.

'Crap, shouldn't have done that,' Fu Xin sighed as he walked out of the school. He had let his frustration overflow and leak out. In normal circumstances, he would've ignored Lin Tian's obvious attempts at provocation.  'That was my fault... should've kept a stronger handle on my mouth.'  Implying to threaten Lin Tian's mother to get to him had left a bad taste in his mouth... but it was true he had thought of it in his own mind and had spoken to them, knowing well what they meant.  'Didn't know I was capable of such thoughts... You learn something new about yourself every day.'

He opened the car door and stepped inside.

"Welcome, young master. How was your day?" Uncle Bao asked as Fu Xin sat down.

"I learned more about the human race... it was not a pleasant experience."