If You Don’t Go To Hell, Who Will?

Course Selection

In the evening, Zhong Yuan and I continued with our studying. I used to dream of studying with the boy I liked, and then while we studied, maybe some sparks or fireworks would show up. But now… Just forget it. Although, there was an advantage to studying with Zhong Yuan, and that was being able to ask him for help. Although we had different majors, this guy had participated in math and physics competitions before, and he’d even won awards. So, I could definitely ask him for help with those two subjects. As for my major courses, I only had the one ‘quantitative analysis’ class. Zhong Yuan actually spent an entire day looking through my textbook, and then he was able to help me review. I suspected that he was a spy that the chemistry school sent over to the business school. Other than hating him and feeling envious, I had nothing to say.

But sometimes I wondered, if it were Lu Zijian studying with me, he would surely be able to help me with my studies too, right? And he’d probably be able to explain things better than Zhong Yuan…

OK, enough with the idle chit-chat. Back to the studying. Zhong Yuan brought along his laptop to the study room that evening. Zhong Yuan’s a showy person, so it wasn’t a surprise that his laptop was also an eye-catching white color. I realized that this guy really liked the color white. He usually dressed in a clean, white shirt. With his neat, short hair, he really gave off the illusion of ‘I am very pure and kind’. But God knows how truly evil and sinister he is.

Zhong Yuan turned on his laptop and asked me, “What electives are you taking?”

I asked back, “Why are you asking?”

Zhong Yuan pulled up the school’s course selection program and signed in. “Why do you think?”

Sweat. I knew that his evil spirit still lingered. You want to pick the same electives as me, huh? So that I’ll have to fill in when they take roll call and I’ll have to do your homework, huh? Dream. On.

I told him, “I’m not telling you.”

Zhong Yuan stared at the computer screen and said calmly, “Don’t make me hack your account.”

I was speechless.

I felt that Zhong Yuan was tricking me. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. Haha. I can’t fall for it every time, right? I decided not to believe him. You’re a business management student. OK, maybe you can get away with knowing some math and physics and quantitative analysis, but you can’t possibly have that many skills, right?

So then I scoffed, “Go ahead and hack me then! Tch!”

“Mm, you told me to hack you,” Zhong Yuan said. He tapped away on the keyboard a bit, and then he said, “OK, done.”

I stared at his computer screen in disbelief. R-really…

Zhong Yuan annoyingly added, “Your username was your student ID number, and your password was the system-generated PIN. You didn’t change it… I didn’t even have to hack you.”

I stared at him with wide eyes. “How did you know my student ID and PIN?”

Zhong Yuan answered, “I have your meal card.”

I was pissed.

Zhong Yuan found my schedule and motioned with his hands. “Without even realizing it, you managed to pick all four of the school’s hardest1 electives. Even if you wanted to torture yourself, you didn’t have to go to such extremes. Blockhead, you’re really some kind of genius.”

I wiped my sweat and looked at him suspiciously.

Zhong Yuan calmly clicked through the course listings and said, “This one, this one, and this one. These are better choices. Do you want to pick them?” He turned to consult with me. I guess you could call it a bit democratic.

Oh please, that’s bullshit. Even if I said I didn’t want to take those classes, he’d still pick them anyway, wouldn’t he?

Zhong Yuan wasn’t the least bit ashamed of his sham of a democracy. He boldly deleted all the electives that I’d previously selected and added the few he suggested. It is true though, that those classes ended up being better choices.

After adjusting my electives list until nothing of the original remained, Zhong Yuan continued on his merry way to change my physical education course as well, from table tennis to regular tennis. He reasoned that table tennis players were very alert and had very fast reflexes, and then… He looked at me with pity and shook his head.

What, was I really that awful?

After he was done with the course selection, Zhong Yuan pulled out a curious little object from his backpack that looked like a flashlight.

I tried to get a look and then asked, “What is it?”

Zhong Yuan replied, “A stun gun. I heard that the campus isn’t very safe recently.”

Sweat. This was the stun gun of legends? It was my first time seeing one. I looked at Zhong Yuan gratefully and said, “Thank you.” This guy may be rather devious, but his pros outweighed his cons.2 Old Mr Marx taught us to approach our problems logically.

“No need to thank me. Just do a bit better in the future. At the least, don’t get angry at me.”

I nodded. This counted as the approval and encouragement of a boss to his employee, right? Guess I’d been performing pretty well. As for not getting angry at Zhong Yuan, I found that a bit ridiculous. He was clearly the one intentionally angering me, OK?

I carefully inspected the small stun gun in my hands. I asked Zhong Yuan, “How do you use this?”

Zhong Yuan pointed to it and gestured. “Point it at the enemy and then push the button.”

“Like this?” I asked, involuntarily pressing the power button as Zhong Yuan instructed…

In just a second’s time, Zhong Yuan collapsed on the desk.