Ch4 - Male Protagonist

It was the first day of school, and the seating chart of the class hadn’t been assigned yet, so all the students chose the seats as per their preference. Yu Ran chose the second to last seat that was by the window, and invited Fang Zhao to sit in front of him. 

“Aren’t the seats at this side too conspicuous? And the light is also brighter here.” Fang Zhao was a little worried about being noticed by the teacher in class. Yu Ran lightly dropped his school bag on the chair before turning around and sitting down, and said, “What do you know, all the male protagonists in the manga sit here.”

Fang Zhao nodded, “Then the one sitting behind the male protagonist must be the girl whose heart was captured by you.”

The two of them looked back at the last seat in unison; it was empty.

Yu Ran didn’t care about any girl; it was meaningless to care. A real man aspired to travel far and make one’s mark, so where would he have time for romance? Yu Ran thought that there were too many things in this world that caught his attention, so he definitely wouldn’t waste his precious youth by falling in love. 

“The protagonist is going to take out a book!” Yu Ran took out the chemistry book from the school bag and slapped it on the table. Lifting a pen, he said, “The protagonist is now going to write his name on it!”

Fang Zhao turned around and saw Yu Ran earnestly scribbling out matchstick-like characters stroke by stroke.

For the rest of the class, Yu Ran was fully immersed in the fun of playing the role of the male protagonist as well as the narrator. With his mouth just open by a slit, and through clenched teeth, he kept whispering dialogues behind Fang Zhao’s back.

“The protagonist picks up the pen with one hand!”

“The protagonist secretly drinks Wangzi!”

“The teacher found out! The protagonist was glared at!”

Yu Ran hastily lowered his head and pretended to listen to the class, waiting for the teacher to turn around and walk away before quickly licking the milk that had remained at the corner of his mouth.

After the chemistry teacher introduced his class requirements, he began to randomly ask questions about basics to help everyone review and recall the contents of middle school. 

“What method should be used to separate the solutes in a solvent? The last student sitting by the window should get up and answer.”

The whole class’s gaze immediately focused on the window, and Yu Ran, who was lost in thought, also turned around to look behind him. He took one look and was shocked — the last seat by the window was totally empty. He grabbed Fang Zhao’s shoulder and asked anxiously, “… Is there something behind me?”

“You don’t have to whisper to ask others, it doesn’t matter even if your answer is wrong.” The teacher said gently.

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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Fang Zhao: “…”

Every time Yu Ran turned around to get something from his school bag, he would see the empty desk and chair behind him. It wasn’t that there was an extra set of desk and chair in the classroom, but that the student who was supposed to be sitting there hadn’t come to school today.

“Is Chu Mian’s hypoglycemia that serious? He didn’t even come to class.” Yu Ran couldn’t help but ask Fang Zhao. 

“Maybe he doesn’t want to listen to Chengjun’s teacher’s lectures. Isn’t Cui He from our class also doing the same? Taking time off to study at home by themselves and only coming to school to take the test.” Fang Zhao wasn’t overly bothered.

Yu Ran felt a little guilty, regretting that he had impulsively mocked Chu Mian as a “little princess” in the heat of the moment that day. As a boy, being evaluated like that would have definitely hurt his self-esteem. At least, he had to remove the word “little” from the little princess. However, he really didn’t expect that Chu Mian, who looked tall and sturdy, wasn’t actually in good physical condition.

After the morning flag-raising ceremony, Yu Ran went to the small shop near the school to buy a packet of white rabbit candy and ten Alps. After returning to the classroom, he stuffed them all into Chu Mian’s bookcase as a gesture of goodwill to his new classmate.

The fourth class in the morning was English held by the homeroom teacher, Bai Yuzhu. After she came in, she didn’t open the lesson plan and multimedia, but stood on the stage and talked about Chu Mian to the class. 

“Some students may have heard that on the day of the opening ceremony our classmate Chu Mian had suddenly fainted in the library and he also didn’t come to class today.” Bai Yuzhu said with a serious expression, “I’ve contacted Chu Mian’s parents before the start of the school year to confirm his physical condition. Chu Mian suffers from a rare disease called ‘episodic sleeping sickness’. He usually sleeps a lot. He had actually fallen asleep when he had fainted the other day.”

Hearing the word “rare disease”, the classroom went silent.

“When Chu Mian’s mother called me, she wanted me to convey to the students that if Chu Mian falls asleep while talking to you or suddenly falls to the ground, there’s no need to panic, Chu Mian doesn’t do it on purpose, he just can’t control his body when the episodes happen. I request the students to take care of him and go easy on him.”

Bai Yuzhu paused and looked down at the paper she had placed on the lecture table. The paper was filled with notes about Chu Mian’s rare disease. 

“Chu Mian’s disease doesn’t affect his health, but it does hinder his normal academic life. Last week in the office, he also told me that he had accidentally fallen asleep on the morning of the two days of the high school entrance examination, which caused him to have no time to write Language composition and a last couple of big math questions. All of you here went through the same high school entrance examinations as Chu Mian, so I believe you should understand his regret better than I do.”

“As the homeroom teacher, I’ve the responsibility and obligation to take good care of every student, and I also hope that when you are at school, you can be more tolerant and considerate towards classmate Chu Mian, so that our experimental class can become the most united and friendly class with the most positive morale of the whole year.”

Yu Ran listened intently to the homeroom teacher’s words, and the whole class was frozen in a state of shock.

As soon as the bell rang, Yu Ran immediately grabbed Fang Zhao to discuss Chu Mian’s disease: “My God… did you understand what the teacher said? A rare sexually transmitted disease that can’t be cured!” 

Yu Ran’s eyes were wide in disbelief, the corners of his mouth twitching with a sigh, revealing his deep inner sympathy and regret.

“My God…” the corners of Fang Zhao’s mouth twitched along, feeling sad for Yu Ran’s below-than-average language comprehension, “Did you even understand what the teacher said? Teacher said ‘episodic sleeping sickness’, what ‘sex disease’… I think it should be narcolepsy.”

“So it was like this,” Yu Ran, who learned the truth, breathed a long sigh of relief, “Scared me to death. I thought Chu Mian had some kind of terminal illness.”

At the same time, Yu Ran also realized another fact — it wasn’t that a mysterious power had awakened in his body, but rather Chu Mian was the one who had a real “supernatural ability”. 

No wonder when he glared at the neighbor’s old Chow Chow these days, it didn’t show even slightest signs of being intimidated.

Yu Ran was disappointed. He sighed in frustration as he followed Fang Zhao to the cafeteria to eat.

The cafeteria of Chengjun High School was renovated during the summer vacation, and the tables, chairs and cutlery were obviously brand new. After Yu Ran got his meal card, he followed Fang Zhao to the window to line up. After getting the meal, he looked around the cafeteria to find empty seats.

Yu Ran carried a plate full of Kung Pao chicken, “Why don’t we go upstairs?” 

“No, upstairs is the dining area for faculty and staff.” Fang Zhao shook his head, “If you become friendly with the teachers right after school starts, they’ll order you every day in class.”

The two looked around and finally found an empty seat in the corner. But before they could even put down their plates, a few people suddenly squeezed in front of them to take up the chairs. Yu Ran swept a glance at them. There were both men and women. Their school uniforms were either not zipped or tied directly to the waist, and the trouser legs were also rolled up to reveal the ankles. Just by their devil may care attitude, it was obvious that these were a little group of delinquents.

Yu Ran was not afraid at all, and said calmly: “We were here first, get out of the way. ”

In front of him was a dark-skinned second-year high school girl. She raised her chin at Yu Ran and said playfully, “Give me your QQ number and I’ll get out of the way.” 

Fang Zhao quickly understood — this social sister had taken a liking to Yu Ran, and it was clear from her eyes that she was flirting.

He was worried that Yu Ran’s response would be too straightforward and hard, and that it would cause conflict, so he wanted to quietly remind Yu Ran to make up a random number for her.

Fang Zhao, who hadn’t opened his mouth yet, saw Yu Ran frowning, and responding to the girl in a neither haughty nor humble manner: “Why should I give you the number that I’ve used for several years? ”

The girl was taken aback. 

Fang Zhao was also taken aback: “…huh?”

Yu Ran put down his plate, his expression obviously unhappy.

He was also a graduate of No. 44 Middle School where extortion and the like was a common thing but today was the first time he had encountered someone trying to rob his QQ account. He now used the beautiful eight-digit account given by his uncle. Even if he didn’t play computer games, he usually had to turn on and log in to QQ to upgrade and save stars and moons. In addition to membership and Yellow diamond Level 7, he also had several sets of out-of-print QQ shows. These were the sacred and inviolable fruits of his many years of painstaking efforts, which he had accumulated since the fifth grade of elementary school.

Yu Ran now had an aura of a person who was ready to fight at any time, his eyes stared vigilantly at these second-year students. 

The girl was speechless and choked for words. She would rather admit that she had been rejected politely than to believe that she was being treated as a QQ account robber by Yu Ran. The latter really hurt her self-esteem. The boy who was with her tilted his body and laughed, and said to Yu Ran, “Brother, she wants to add your QQ account to chat with you, you wanna add it? ”

Yu Ran shook his head without thinking, mainly because he was afraid of his account being hacked.

The girl’s face was showing a bit of embarrassment after being rejected so mercilessly. She glanced at the plate on the table and jokingly said, “Then you can stand and eat.”

Fang Zhao looked into the distance and whispered, “Yu Ran, there’s a seat over there, shall we go over there? ” 

Yu Ran didn’t move. He could see that these people were looking for trouble. Seniors usually ragged the new joinees for some fun, so he wasn’t interested in paying attention to it, but if he didn’t solve this matter today, they would still provoke other students tomorrow. This time, they asked for a QQ account, and the next time they will be extorting money.

Thinking about it this way, Yu Ran was even more reluctant to admit defeat, and said with a calm face: “If you want me to stand, then you’ve to kneel down for me first. ”

The boy who was still laughing until just now immediately looked fierce, slapped the tabletop, and enunciated each word as if something was in his mouth: “Aren’t you being too cocky? We kindly asked you for your QQ account but this is how you appreciate others’ kindness?”

Yu Ran’s face was expressionless: “What?” 

The boy tilted his head and deliberately lowered his voice when he spoke: “Apologize to my sister, then stand here and eat.”

Yu Ran said calmly: “You idiot.”

The other party was instantly pissed off.

The boy slapped the table with enough force to even shake the plate on the table. He stretched out a finger at Yu Ran, and with a hoarse voice he said, “If you’ve the courage, you can fight with me this Saturday, you decide the time. Meet me outside of McDonald’s on Baicao Road, whoever doesn’t come is a grandson! Let’s see if I still can’t fix a little hairy kid like you…” 

Even though Yu Ran wasn’t afraid of committing crimes, he didn’t want to take the initiative to cause trouble. Not to mention, he was now already a high school student and unlike when he was in middle school, he had already left behind the bad habit of fighting and bragging and pretending to be an adult. He just wanted to be a law-abiding, ordinary student in Chengjun and spend three years of a healthy, sunny and positive life.

Unfortunately…

Yu Ran sighed silently from the bottom of his heart.

It was a pity that his own dashing and unrestrained temperament was too much like a male protagonist of a movie. So as the person in the limelight, he had to bear the brunt of this protagonist’s halo. The side characters could only add a bit of a drama by being abused by the protagonist. Incompetent people would only bully juniors to establish prestige. And as the protagonist, he must stand up bravely at the right time to bring justice — 

“Do I need to pick a day to beat a fucking dog?”