DTTM – Chapter 20 : Shall we go for the Group Study?

Chapter 19 | 😉 Contents 👍 | Chapter 21

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Silvery: Today will be the last update for this month. See you all next month!

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Translator: Silvery
PR: Decadence

The anonymous forum’s chit-chat corner is flooded by the tears of blood from Team 7’s students once again.

The events this time are headed towards a rather bizarre direction.

According to the gossip post, the two Boss Bros’ relationship has secretly developed from visiting the toilet hand-in-hand, into something a little bit more distinct.

There were a couple of people who swore, with 50% similarities in their accounts, that not only did God Kun use a table lamp to sneakily mug while his roommate is asleep, he even deceived said dormmate into sleeping a while more by saying he’s still in bed, even when he is so clearly answering the door.

When Yu Sheng returns from washing his face, Jin Linkun is leaning against the side of the door and on his phone, scrolling through page after page on the forum.

He laments as he does so:

“Rumours hold much sway.* Though things have escalated to this point, I don’t think it’s fair how it turned out.”

(*Is an idiom in Chinese)

Yu Sheng skips over the idiom and peeks at the screen of the phone that is handed to him. His brows rise a little.

Save for the last time he spent over an hour on buying some pancakes, he has never looked at this forum again. He’d still thought Jin Linkun wouldn’t saunter in either, but unexpectedly enough, he’s quite highly skilled at navigating through the forum’s BS.

The previous gossip post has already accumulated over several dozens of pages. The newbies are all tired of flipping through them; It’d be more aptly put to say they were drowning in those comments. Thus, the gossip this time belongs to a new post.

Yu Sheng carelessly brushes past several pages. Most of the comments are emotional about the Study God must have been like me, pouring over practice questions secretly in the cold of night. The demoralized academic tyrants whose confidence had been beaten down to near-zero suddenly feel said confidence flaring back to life. Their fiery passion for studies once more set the entire Summer Camp on flames.

In turn, they didn’t write any crap about the Study God being pompous, hard to get along with, and stuff like that.

He couldn’t care less. Handing the phone back, he swiftly pulls the towel over to wipe his face with:

“You didn’t turn on the lamp?”

Jin Linkun takes his phone back: “I did, but—”

Yu Sheng doesn’t ‘But’ with him: “You didn’t lie to me about being in bed?”

Jin Linkun: “……”

So maybe he’s guilty of that.

Moreover, if he hadn’t said that at the time, Yu Sheng wouldn’t have slept right through lunch and been woken up by hunger pangs.

Jin Linkun pockets his phone, pulling open a can of millet red dates porridge to hand him:

“Although even I am close to believing the forum at this point, I still think this matter can be explained by the love and affection between me and my roommate…”

Yu Sheng has only stretched out his hand when a bodily shudder runs through him at those words. He swiftly withdraws his hand:

“Who’s affectionate with you?”

“Alright. We’re not affectionate.”

Jin Linkun backs off easily. Nodding agreeably, he simply pulls Yu Sheng’s hand back and stuffs the porridge in his hand:

“Take a few bites. This one’s good for the stomach.”

……

After Yu Sheng clears up the porridge, he still thinks there’s something wrong with those words of his.

In high school, the hot topics amongst the students are fated to have a short expiry date. When the novelty dies out, the chit-chatting zone naturally moves on to a fresh topic for gossip.

The gavel may have been struck, confirming the matter of God Kun wielding a table lamp to mug in secret, and the gossip may have passed. However, the ripples it made are left behind.

The same model of desk lamp the Study God used began to spread through the Camp in the shadows. Some students with a businessman’s mindset were quick to seize the opportunity, locating similar models to buy in bulk and clearing them from the shelves in a blink of an eye.

The thought process must run similar to that of the Sure-to-Pass Protractor Set. In the subsequent days, the sales volume of the table lamp stayed sky-high without ever plunging once.

Some statistical post rounded up all the scattered sales and gathered that already, the Summer Camp has reached a never-before-seen point where one out of every ten people owns a desk lamp.

When Yu Sheng made out at night to buy some late-night snacks, he even shoved a neat-looking pamphlet while walking under the street lights.

“What are you looking at?”

Jin Linkun looks up from where he is sitting at his desk. Spotting that piece of paper in his hand, he can’t help wandering over to catch a curious peek.

Yu Sheng is not done with it just yet. Angling it sideways for him to see, he puts the oden he bought for him on the table.

Jin Linkun reads the pamphlet together with him, dipping his head as he reads aloud:

“Are you still lamenting the lack of time? Are you still hesitating over the shortness and bitterness of life? Are you still wringing your wrist in despair because your roommate has finished studying, but you haven’t…What is this?”

“That.”

Yu Sheng turns it over, flitting through it, before waving at that source of evil sitting innocently on Jin Linkun’s desk. He chucks the pamphlet in the other’s hands:

“Used by the Study God, made specially for sneaking in some proper studying while your roommate is asleep. Is fast charging, has long operation time. Has a wide range of uses, such as: Power shortage, circuit trips, the End of the World, as well as other emergency situations. You can also use it in the dead of the night when the impulse to study becomes irrepressible—”

“Alright, that’s enough, spare me.”

Jin Linkun lets out a chuckle he can’t hold back, shaking his head as he cuts Yu Sheng off:

“The world of the academic overlords truly is too terrifying…”

The stack of books piled high on his desk is a little messy. He randomly pulls apart the two closest ones to him.

Just when he is about to stuff the pamphlet in between, his eyes land upon the miniscule letters on its back and his brows rise mildly.

Then, he picks it up and scans it closely.

There’s not a word lacking.

Yu Sheng had only flipped to the page behind after Jin Linkun was done reading the front. He had taken a glance at most.

Yu Sheng is done with this topic. Heading back to his own study desk, he pulls the chair out ready to eat.

Sensing his eyes on him, Yu Sheng breaks the chopsticks apart and looks up at him:

“Not hungry?”

Jin Linkun truly doesn’t look the slightest bit hungry. Putting the pamphlet down, he heads over, bright-eyed, and two hands are settled over Yu Sheng’s shoulders:

“Friend.”

He leans in and meets Yu Sheng’s eyes. He looks somewhat sombre, as if he’s about to talk about some serious affair.

Yu Sheng frowns.

Truth to be told, he’s not too well-accustomed to being this close with people. Even after this guy invaded his personal bubble time after time and gradually trained up the tiniest self-restrain that keeps him from throwing him away, he still can’t get used to being looked at by a pair of eyes like this.

Especially when the depths of his eyes seem to be endless.

Ink black with the deepest depths, even if they’re obscured by glass, they still seem capable of sucking one right in.

The skies outside the windows are a deep, dark colour. The warm hues of the lights shower down upon them. The air-con buzzes with the soft sounds of the winds it blows out, its slightly cool breeze brushing right past the bend of their arms.

Yu Sheng’s heart skips a beat for some reason. Gripping the pair of chopsticks in his hand, he staunchly fights down the urge to stab two holes into him:

“What’s up with you?”

Jin Linkun: “Shall we go for the Group Study?”

“……”

……

“Let’s think back to it.”

Sitting in the classroom for Night Self-Study, Yu Sheng calmly stares at the ‘8pm-11pm’ written on the board:

“When you invited me to the group study, besides rejecting you, did I ever say anything along the lines of, ‘I might as well go for the night study if I have to study with you’?”

Jin Linkun thinks about it and answers definitively: “No.”

Yu Sheng eyes the 《Have you really mastered High School Math? – Conics and Graphs》sitting before him. He takes a deep breath, and he releases it over the course of a long time.

There is a reason why the Summer Camp suddenly gained a Night Self-Study session:

After securing their desk lamps, the Academic Tycoons lurched into a frenzied style of doing drills at night. Even if both students in a room are studying, they’ve still got to turn off the main lights and wield their table light on their own, maintaining that ‘Only I alone am Great’ atmosphere to dive deep into their studies.

In the beginning, there weren’t any problems. Not until, at least, the Supervisor in charge of Summer Camp Life had a sudden fancy to check the dorms. When he got close enough, he saw the faint white lights in the many pitch-black rooms of the dorms. Under their illumination, ghastly faces bearing eyes turned soulless from all-nighters peered out at him. It scared him so much, he had a heart attack on the spot.

Old Wan considered it carefully and concluded it must be because the ardent passions of the academic overlords were not conveyed properly.

“Three hours of time. We can bear through it.”

Jin Linkun seems to share what he feels. Flitting his gaze around the classroom of students who are going all out to put their love for studying on full display, he pats Yu Sheng on the arm:

“I am not used to studying with so many people either.”

Oh, Yu Sheng is a stranger to more than just that.

He had left his basics behind for too long. Even if he stayed at this Summer Camp in the end, he still instinctively bulks at the thought of studying.

It seems like only by rejecting his studies, then can he avoid drawing attention and not be made to stand under so many people’s eyes again. Only by doing so, then can he cut himself off from those shitty affairs which have nearly faded into a place where he can’t reach, wiping the slate clean.

Though he knows neither staying nor leaving would feel right, he was still stopped by some mysterious force from taking a step out of here.

These past few days, Team 7’s activities were all Group Studies spanning various subjects and they were quite self-directed. They didn’t force his hand even if he didn’t participate. But the Night Self-Study’s a whole different thing.

Especially when he’s surrounded on all sides by the soft strokes of pens and pencils against paper, the flipping of pages, and the people who are head deep in their books. They might as well put a progress bar above their heads labelled [Chemistry Progress: 46/100]. It’s that kind of atmosphere.

Yu Sheng’s finger twitches and bends subconsciously.

……

He’ll just take a glance. He won’t think too much of it.

After sitting at his desk for a while, he finally cracks open the Problem Set Jin Linkun thrusted to him and flips through a couple of pages.

On the 7^th page, there is a bit of weight that puts a slight dip on his fingers.

Yu Sheng scrunches his brows and turns that page back.

On it is a post-it note.

It’s a somewhat blinding neon yellow. An incredibly abstract art is drawn from some crooked strokes of a brush to form something that only has a mouth. Down below, powerful, bold letters are even touched up lovingly to say – Donald Duck.

Yu Sheng: “……”

What god damned motherfucking Donald Duck.

The Study God’s unique aesthetic is a bit too far out of the realm of comprehension. Facing the line art of Donald Duck which only reminds him of a deflated Disney Balloon, Yu Sheng is still for a beat. Then, his fingertips scope out the sides of the book and finds another post-it on the 14^th page.

Perhaps, Jin Linkun had realized his lack of talent for drawing Disney characters with the 1^st one. On the 14^th page, the sticky note morphed into a Doraemon with the bloody, ferocious mouth of a predator.

Yu Sheng can’t help himself. Continuing to flip towards the back, sure enough, he finds another few post-it notes on the 21^st, 28^th, 35^th pages, all bearing some free-hand sketches gone wrong.

Pressing a hand to his forehead, Yu Sheng tries to follow Jin Linkun’s line of thought on how this could possibly be a new and original way of studying. Flipping past another 7 pages, he lands upon the thin last page where there is one last post-it note.

He must have discovered his complete lack of artistic talents, because there is no longer a scrawled on line that is incomprehensible without explanation. Only a line of words was written.

The strokes of the brush are bold, free and flowing with every line and curve beautiful enough to be submitted for a calligraphy exhibition.

This note seems more sombre without illustrations.

Yu Sheng is rendered speechless for a beat. The ends of his mouth curving up against his will, he is just about to close the book when his hands come to an abrupt halt.

On the day of the Showdown for the Grammar Champion, in the midst of an annoying crowd of voices reading English aloud—

Jin Linkun had held the CET6 dictionary which Yu Sheng had finished reading back in Middle School and bent down, planting a hand on his shoulder as he flipped through the book.

……

“This one is good.”

Likely due to his pallor that day, Jin Linkun used more force when gripping onto him, the warmth of his palm pressing on Yu Sheng’s shoulder as if longing to pull out some invisible strength from him.

“Look, there are even illustrations.”

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Next Time on DTTM!
Chapter 21: <Let’s call this water under the bridge, shall we?>
Preview:

2020-09-01T21:00:00

  days

  hours  minutes  seconds

until

September – ‘Start of Story’

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Chapter 19 | 😉 Contents 👍 | Chapter 21

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