Chapter Text
The subway car rumbled under his feet, making its way down the rails and to its destination. Shen Yuan stood gripping a pole with one hand, music coming out of his headphones as he scrolled mindlessly on his phone. A notification popped up on the screen, giving him the reminder of the tutoring session he had to give in several hours to one of the younger students. Shen Yuan only gave it a quick glance before he closed out of it and went back to scrolling through one of his social media apps. The subway car began coming to a stop and Shen Yuan looked up for a moment to see the station and when he came to the conclusion it wasn’t his station, he went back to looking at his phone.
While he waited, people board and deboard the train in rapid succession, making it one of the busier stops. A couple of minutes pass before the subway car picks up speed again, slowly chugging down the rails before it picks up to speed.
The time spent waiting gives Shen Yuan enough time to have watched several videos of people doing idiotic behaviors and a short analysis on one of the webnovels he was reading. He scrolled past several more videos, paying them little mind when it came to looking at influencer or dance videos and instead stopping when the video was clearly ragebait or at the very least, lacking in common sense.
On one of the videos, Shen Yuan stopped to comment on them, criticizing the poster of the video for his stupidity. Shen Yuan smirked, knowing that would enrage a good couple of people enough to get him several hate replies. He looked at a couple more videos with boredom before he tucked away his phone, waiting for his stop. His hand gripped around the pole, the tight grasp enough to keep him from wobbling around with the movement of the subway. The music kept playing in his ears, going on shuffling from song to song through Shen Yuan’s playlist.
When the train came to a stop, Shen Yuan got off the train and onto the concrete, noting that there were more people getting off than getting on. Rather it was students if anything, but Shen Yuan didn’t pay any of them attention since none of them were people he spoke to or knew.
He walks down the station, going up the stairs to welcome a better smell which was not the scent of cigarettes and people with the littlest bit of hygiene.
Outside, where the sun had already begun creeping up to signal the start of the day, it was much fresher and the air was much cleaner. Shen Yuan began walking, slowly moving toward the direction of the school. Being an early Monday, there were quite a few people on the streets, people walking to work, children—toddlers more likely—running freely ahead of their mothers and students heading straight for their classes. Shen Yuan heads to his high school, paying the rest of the people around him little attention.
The gates of the school are wide open, the black iron bars pushed off to the side so students can enter freely.
The open courtyard is filled with students, small groups talking to each other in huddles or people moving inside the school or just people sitting on the ground, doing their homework. Amongst the groups, he noticed that there were two people arguing back and forth, one of them on the verge of exploding and starting a fist fight in the courtyard.
Shen Yuan immediately recognizes the two of them as his classmates, Shen Jiu and Liu Qingge.
He can’t help but be a little curious as he wanders closer, eyeing the two of them to see what they were arguing about. A couple of his other classmates are standing around, none of them wanting to get involved, lest they get attacked. Shen Yuan approaches one of his friends, who is holding up a camera, ready to record when the two start throwing fists.
“You’re going to record them?" Shen Yuan asks.
“Why do you think I’m holding up the camera?” Xiang Fei retorts, not even sparing him a glance to avoid missing the fight.
Shen Yuan sighed, knowing it was hopeless to tell his friend to put down the camera for once. Liu Qingge and Shen Jiu basically got into fights daily, they would begin with snarky remarks and pointed rebuttals and it would become a slippery slope downward into physical fights. Liu Qingge would always win the fights, though occasionally he’d have moments where he’d get bruised heavily if Shen Jiu was wound up enough.
Nobody could jump to cut into their fights either, they’d end up getting scratched or punched if they tried to. Shen Jiu would fight dirty, his nails were sharp knives and if he was irritated enough, he could scratch you hard enough to make one bleed. Liu Qingge wasn’t as devious but he always kept his guard up around Shen Jiu, who would always be saying something to enrage him. Their back and forth made it so nobody wanted to get in the middle of them, because it would be bound to happen if it didn’t happen in the morning, it’d happen in the afternoon and vice versa. Just, self explanatory, there was no reason to get in it.
“One of them is going to jump you for that,” Shen Yuan answers, eyeing the camera, “And I don’t think you want a broken phone.”
“I’m not missing this opportunity.” Xiang Fei declares stubbornly.
“If your phone is broken, how do you plan on writing fanfiction?” Shen Yuan questions him. Xiang Fei would die before he gave up writing any of that stuff. Xiang Fei gave him an irritated scowl, upset by that comment.
“It’s not fanfiction.” He huffs.
Shen Yuan laughs, “So, what is it then?”
“Original work.” Xiang Fei hisses, putting emphasis on the original. Shen Yuan has to stop himself from laughing, the work Xiang Fei wrote was “original” indeed, but despite that, it was the quality of work written by a student in elementary school. It’d be easier to call it fanfiction.
“Is the other stuff fanfiction too?” Shen Yuan teases, crossing his arms and giving Xiang Fei a knowing look.
Xiang Fei puts down his camera just for a moment, and looks at Shen Yuan, “Are you stupid?”
Shen Yuan smiles.
“RPF is fanfiction, the other stuff is original work.”
Shen Yuan raised a brow, “So you write fanfiction,” Xiang Fei’s eyes began twitching, “What’s RPF anyway?”
“RPF is real person fiction,” He explains, “Now, stop bothering me, I’m trying to record.”
Shen Yuan nods solemnly and a moment later, there’s a swing of a fist and Shen Jiu and Liu Qingge begin fighting. Liu Qingge throws a fist at Shen Jiu’s face and the other boy ducks, lunging at him a second later, making the two of them crash onto the ground. A loud whoop erupts from a student who caught onto the fight from the other side of the courtyard as Liu Qingge and Shen Jiu wrestle on the ground, rolling around, aggressively kicking and biting. Shen Yuan quickly backs up to not get caught in the midst of the fight and as do the others around him as the two fighting don’t pay attention to their environment, rolling around kicking dust up into the air that Shen Yuan hadn’t known was there before.
A large group crowds around the two, increasing with people pulling out their phones and cameras to record the fight with growing enthusiasm. Shen Yuan shoots a glance at Xiang Fei whose eyes are locked on his camera, glittering with excitement at catching the fight.
Loud cheers and whoops erupt from the crowd while the two pummel each other. Neither of the two are speaking in the fight, just snarling and aggressive biting—mainly Shen Jiu who Shen Yuan had no clue where he’d learnt that from. There’s a particularly loud cheer when Shen Jiu successfully bites Liu Qingge, his teeth digging into the other’s shoulder. Liu Qingge lets out a hiss of pain, yanking Shen Jiu off his shoulder by his hair. He kicks Shen Jiu in the stomach and the other crashes onto the ground, face scrunched with rage.
He immediately throws himself at Liu Qingge and the other rolls out of the way, which makes Shen Jiu miss him by only a hair. Shen Jiu scrambles up to his feet, hair ruffled up, hands dirty and clothes messy. He looked at Liu Qingge for one second, considering if he should pounce and then he went for it.
This time, he does get Liu Qingge and the two immediately go out with another bout of punching and kicking. People are cheering loudly, the excitement tingling in the air with the people recording the fight, when suddenly, all of it is cut short by someone yelling.
“Teacher’s coming, teacher’s coming!” They yelled.
Phones vanish faster than they came and the crowd quickly disperses.
Liu Qingge and Shen Jiu who had seemed impossible to pull apart quickly get up, dust their clothes to the best of their ability and make their moves to look as though they’d been doing something else. Liu Qingg moves to camp behind a tree, sitting down and he pulls out his phone as though he’d been looking at it the entire time. Shen Jiu instead heads towards the direction of the school for some reason, and somehow manages to slip past the teacher who walks into the courtyard, followed by another student.
The teacher looks around, apparently searching for a fight that had been happening only seconds before, but the fighting students in question were nowhere to be seen.
Teacher and student exchange glances, confused.
“There was fighting I swear!” The student exclaims, “I went to go get you as soon as the fight started, I have no idea what happened! There was a big crowd and people were recording and it was super loud!” The teacher nods, taking a long glance around the courtyard in order to find the suspects. Neither of them were anywhere to be found, Shen Yuan couldn’t help but watch the student plea with the teacher but nobody else was going to join in and be witness.
Shen Jiu already held a reputation for being one of the more talented students—constantly performing well in classes despite his attitude. That was the main reason his behavior was allowed to slide, a student who constantly did well in classes and brought the school a great reputation could have his behavior overlooked. Nobody would be the one to talk about how the student council president was childhood friends with Shen Jiu which ultimately led to this bias. Liu Qingge was on a similar level of talent as Shen Jiu, and also far more intimidating, so nobody wanted to get near him or get him of all people in trouble. If the two of them got in trouble, they’d probably work together which was far worse than having them disagree and so the fights avoided the reports of students.
Shen Yuan shot a quick glance at the student who reported the fight, wondering if it was someone he knew.
The student was a girl with black hair with hair tied back into a braid and loose bangs drooping on her forehead. She looked to be around fifteen years old but other than that and being dressed in the school uniform, Shen Yuan didn’t recognize her. Seeing that she was just a random student likely not knowing how things worked—which was quite confusing considering these fights had been happening since middle school.
“Bro, do you want to go inside?” Xiang Fei asks, “It’s boring out here.”
“Are you only bored because the fight ended?” Shen Yuan asks.
Xiang Fei pauses, looks at him, then, “No.”
Shen Yuan looked at him for a long moment, concluding he had hesitated and indeed the fighting stopping was the reason that he now wanted to go inside. Xiang Fei was far too easy for Shen Yuan to read, and despite Shen Yuan’s friends claiming he was clueless on getting social cues or reading people’s emotions, he was quite sure that wasn’t true.
“Okay, fine.” He answers with a nod of his head.
Shen Yuan shoots a quick look at Liu Qingge before he proceeds to follow Xiang Fei inside. Xiang Fei drags him past the main office and the rows and rows of hundreds of lockers that Shen Yuan is sure nobody’s used ever in their lifetime. They walk down the hall past the staircases and into the cafeteria which with its grand space for students to sit, is still quite empty. The number of people is sparse and those who are there, are gathered in little clumps amongst themselves. Being in the cafeteria is far more intimidating than being outside in the courtyard.
Despite the lack of people, there’s a huge clump surrounding a few cafeteria tables, mostly students in grade eleven though there are a number of them in grade ten in the group. Shen Yuan watched the group, staring for a good while until they sat down at one of the tables.
“I wonder what’s happening over there.” He muttered, taking one last look before he focused back on Xiang Fei.
Xiang Fei pulled out his phone and began scrolling, “Well, I think it’s because that one kid you’re tutoring is over there.”
“Luo Binghe?” Shen Yuan questioned. He turned back to look over at the group, trying to spot the familiar curly haired student, “Why’d he have a crowd like that around him? Is he getting bullied or something?”
Xiang Fei scoffed, “Yeah right, like he’d ever get bullied.”
Shen Yuan didn’t pay attention to what Xiang Fei said and instead tried craning his neck to catch a glimpse of Luo Binghe. Not being able to see him, he turned back around.
“Seriously, what would warrant that much attention?” He half mutters, pulling out his phone and turning the camera on.
Xiang Fei looked up, “Are you going to use that camera to zoom in and spy?” His voice is incredulous.
“What else would I do?” Shen Yuan retorted, “I can’t see him anywhere.” He adjusted the camera with his fingers, trying to zoom it in closer on the group and trying to scan amongst the standing students. Xiang Fei lets out a loud noise of disbelief as though he couldn’t believe Shen Yuan were trying to spy on someone else.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am being serious.” Shen Yuan answers, finally giving up on sitting down. He got up, and when he couldn’t see again among the crowded standing students talking amongst themselves, he sat back down and plops down in the chair. Xiang Fei is only raising a single brow, and when Shen Yuan asked him what he was doing, Xiang Fei stopped and kept scrolling on his phone, not paying him any attention.
Not being able to get any sign of Luo Binghe, Shen Yuan decides to text him.
He sends a quick text to Luo Binghe, asking him where he’s at.
A moment later, Luo Binghe texts back with a message saying that he’s not doing anything and if Shen Yuan wants to meet, he’s free. Shen Yuan glances over at where the group is sitting, wondering if Luo Binghe is indeed in that group of students but considering what he had just sent, it’s unlikely. He sent another text letting him know that he was just curious and thanked him for his offer. He then opens social media to see that quite a spam of notifications had appeared in his inbox.
One look at the notifications and Shen Yuan can tell he’s pissed off quite a number of people with his post.
For a minute, he considers being nice and not giving these people the time of day. Though, after scrolling through the enraged replies, Shen Yuan decides to piss them off further.
His fingers type away, and he begins ragebating a hundred more people.