The Detective of Noble Boys' Academy, Part 14

14

[Hmm... this sounds a bit like the kind of PUA lines the protagonists in those 'scummy gong' novels would say. It's all just the insecure gong overthinking things! He neither directly answers whether he's been stringing along multiple people, nor admits he's a player!!]

'I haven't done any of the things you're accusing me of.'

[Actually, there's nothing wrong with liking someone!!!]

[Your love just has a different way of expressing itself! Li Xihe is a sexually repressed virgin — what does he know about love? You following people around isn't love, it's just a personal quirk——]

'Stop. Shut up.'

[Tell him boldly that you love him! Bewitch him!! Say: 'Man, you've caught my interest' — isn't that just wanting to possess my love all to yourself?! Just say it out loud!!]

Ji Yue hated lying.

'Ji Yue, are you done with your painting?'

Zhou Zhou was passing by his Art Studio and found him standing there in a daze.

'In a daze' meant he was holding his paintbrush, frozen mid-gesture in front of the wall, not even blinking — anyone who didn't know better might have thought some saint from a painting had reached out and stolen his soul.

Ji Yue came back to himself and looked over at Zhou Zhou. 'Not yet.'

'What's up, thinking about where to go during the break?' Zhou Zhou dragged over a stool and sat down. 'Why don't you come with me to Planet K3 for a hunting trip?'

He shook his head.

The problem at hand was too thorny. He had to resolve Li Xihe's suspicions before the holiday, or he really would end up thrown into the sea to feed the sharks.

Only...

Ji Yue had been turning one question over in his mind ever since: had Li Xihe believed him?

When lunchtime came around, he followed his usual routine and headed downstairs to eat. The place was close to the arts building, and medical students often turned up there too. Ji Yue sat inside the Restaurant and caught a glimpse of a few medical students in white coats filing past, all of them looking thoroughly miserable.

Li Xihe's movements weren't hard to track. After waiting roughly ten minutes, Ji Yue spotted the refined, bespectacled young man coming out from the campus clinic on the other side, just finishing his shift.

Even-tempered. Always smiling. Impeccably mannered. And, beneath all of that, deeply, chronically suspicious.

How to make Li Xihe lower his guard?

——The only way was to make this person genuinely believe that he had been fallen for by a gay stalker.

[Host, go after Li Xihe! Pull out stronger moves — just make him unable to handle it.]

'No.'

[You don't know how? It's easy — just crook your finger at him! Simple as that.]

Ji Yue didn't follow the advice. The System's suggestions always sounded bizarre, and he had a vague feeling he'd get played if he listened.

Better to read the situation and act accordingly.

This time he chose a seat by the window, in a well-lit spot. Ji Yue held up a newspaper to cover his face the same as before, and when Li Xihe came in with a friend to eat, he let just his eyes peek out over the edge.

'The campus beauty is sneaking glances at you,' Li Xihe's friend nudged him. 'Hey, is something going on between you two?'

Li Xihe glanced over. The figure by the window was bathed in bright sunlight, posture conspicuously self-conscious — the moment their eyes met, Ji Yue immediately dropped his gaze and looked away, then picked up a financial magazine with perfect nonchalance.

'What's the deal between you two?'

'Nothing.'

Li Xihe quietly withdrew his gaze.

Throughout the entire meal, the beautiful boy's gaze — faint, elusive, impossible to pin down — never quite left. He sat there holding a large glass of lemon water, but his eyes drifted away from it, his expression perfectly natural, as though he really were just spacing out; whenever he was caught looking, his lashes would flutter once, and then it was as if nothing had happened at all.

No one could quite tell what he was actually looking at. Sometimes it was people — Li Xihe's friends — and sometimes it seemed like he was eavesdropping on their conversation.

After lunch, Li Xihe walked out of the Restaurant into the warm afternoon sun. He and his friend strolled along the street, chatting idly about nothing in particular.

Ji Yue had already left.

Before Li Xihe finished paying and headed out, he noticed that the seat by the window had long been empty. The server had already cleared away the mango dessert Ji Yue always ordered; the table had been wiped clean, as though he had never been there at all.

Li Xihe reined in his wandering thoughts and let his gaze drift across the pedestrians and shop fronts lining the street.

At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary — but when he looked more carefully, Li Xihe spotted someone standing on the other side of the road, just a few metres away, behind the glass of a clothing store.

Ji Yue.

The young man stood perfectly still behind that pane of glass.

No expression on his face. He simply held Li Xihe's gaze across the distance, quiet and unmoving.

Long hair. Delicate features. Pale. Utterly without warmth.

Like a... mannequin in a display window?

On either side of him stood two plastic dress forms, sharing something of the same quality as he did.

Li Xihe stared back at him across the flow of traffic and the crowd, for a long, still moment.

His friend had kept walking ahead, intending to buy something, and only now noticed he hadn't kept up. 'What are you looking at?'

'Nothing.'

His friend mentioned wanting to buy a hamster and showed him a photo of a striped mouse.

Li Xihe nodded and walked on. When he looked up again at the other side of the street, Ji Yue had already vanished from the display window.

He had assumed that would be the end of tonight's strange little adventure.

But when they reached the car park, there was an extra figure standing beside the purple-silver sports car. Before Li Xihe could get a clear look, the figure slipped back and away — all he caught was a sweep of long hair, dark as a black butterfly's wings, skimming past the rear of the car.

Behind one of the car park's support pillars, Li Xihe finally found the long-haired young man crouched down, tying his shoelace.

A grapefruit-pink T-shirt. Ripped jeans. A collarbone chain with a heart-shaped pendant.

Ji Yue looked up at Li Xihe, expression blank.

'Little sister, why do you keep following me around?'

Li Xihe crouched down helplessly to talk to him.

Ji Yue wore his usual absence of expression, and he wore it now too — he didn't answer.

His eyes were as still and deep as a frozen sea, as though he had always known this day would come: the day the boy he liked would corner him and demand to know why he'd been stalking him.

'Little sister, why don't you go stalk someone else?'

'I will. Eventually.'

Ji Yue finally spoke.

'Oh?'

'Because they're all connected to you.'

'...'

'Starting with your social circle — I want to know everything about you.'

It wasn't exactly a lie. The surveillance was part of understanding the F4's and the top students' behavioural patterns.

To anyone else, though, it would sound far more unsettling — like something a yandere would say.

Li Xihe smiled. 'And what information have you managed to analyse about me?'

'I know what you were wearing last December on Christmas Eve, and that you changed that night because Coke got spilled on your sleeve. The cat you loved was white, and you weren't able to bring it back with you. Is that enough detail?'

'...'

The eyes behind those lenses — always carrying a faint smile — showed, for the first time, a flicker of genuine surprise.

[Holy — Host, you just recited straight from the original novel! 'In December, Li Xihe celebrated Christmas with his family in [location] in [country], wearing [outfit]; the family cat knocked over a Coke, blah blah blah.' There was no one else around at the time, and Li Xihe has never told anyone about it!! The moment you said that, his expression actually changed.]

[You've just built the image of a deranged obsessive who's been stalking him since last year... and back then you hadn't even transferred to this school yet!]

[Hahahahaha!!! Li Xihe should definitely back off now!]

What a nuisance.

Ji Yue thought: if he still doesn't believe it, I might as well just kill him.

The silence stretched on for a long time.

'You like me?'

Li Xihe repeated the words, as if to himself.

Kill you, kill you...

Ji Yue cursed him silently and looked away toward the bus stop across the street. The electronic display board showed the next bus arriving in three minutes.

'Are you heading home?'

Li Xihe had noticed where his gaze had gone.

'Art Studio.'

'I'll drive you.'

'...'

'Little sister, are you angry with me?'

'No.'

Just want to slap you.

Ji Yue stood and walked toward the sports car. Li Xihe opened the door for him.

The interior was soaked in warmth from the sun — almost uncomfortably hot. Li Xihe rolled down the window, and a gust of wind swept in.

Li Xihe glanced over at him: still the same cold-faced beautiful boy, though he seemed to carry a slightly sharper edge than before.

'I've always wanted to ask — why don't you drive yourself?'

'Because I don't have a licence, and I don't like self-driving cars.'

'Why not?'

'Just don't.'

'That's fine, I can pick you up.' Li Xihe's voice was gentle and easy. 'We don't live that far apart anyway.'

[Does that mean Li Xihe believed it??]

'Who knows.'

[Host has gotten so much more irritable lately!]

'Before I came here, all I wanted was to cosplay as a detective. Not to tell a man I liked him.'

[Being a detective is a risky profession!]

The System cackled again.

Ji Yue unlocked the Art Studio door, and Li Xihe followed him inside.

A thick smell of paint hung in the still air.

Ji Yue paid Li Xihe no further attention, bowing his head to dip his brush into the palette, absorbed in his own work.

The room was very quiet — nothing but the soft sound of his brushstrokes.

Li Xihe stood behind him and watched for a long time. The painting had a religious quality to it, vivid with colour — and yet Ji Yue didn't seem like someone who would hold any religious faith.

He really was a contradictory person.

Artists were supposed to have delicate, sensitive inner lives; Ji Yue, by contrast, was cold and ruthless, fickle-hearted, and utterly unrepentant.

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Campus BBS

HOT POSTS / HOT...

Thread: Did the campus beauty have a fight with Li [redacted]???? (sobbing)

0L: Nobody is allowed to make the campus beauty upset, okay???? (sobbing)

1L: Yeah... they were standing face to face on the tree-lined path like they were filming a tragic breakup scene (sobbing) (fists clenched)

2L: What?? They actually had a fight in a place like that?? (confused)

3L: No idea what it was about, zero gossip to go on, but both of them looked absolutely terrible! (furious)

4L: Does the campus beauty have any expression other than 'blank'? Someone send me a photo (confused) (confused)

5L: It's just the vibe, you know — even the birds passing by stopped in their tracks...

6L: And it looked like Li [redacted] was the one who was angry!

7L: What, he got angry at the campus beauty! (furious)

8L: The campus beauty is so quiet and pure — how could he do anything to make someone angry? It must be Li [redacted]'s fault!! (furious) (furious) (fists clenched)

9L: ...To be fair though, Li [redacted]'s temper is actually pretty decent compared to the rest of F4... it's hard to imagine what the campus beauty could have done to make Li [redacted] angry... (confused)

10L: It can't be something like emotional deception, can it... Li [redacted] isn't short on money, and his feelings aren't exactly priceless either — could it be that he got played in a different way? (clown face)

11L: Is that even worth getting angry over lol

12L: Keep watching! More updates to come!