Chapter 16

Little Tangerine

Zhao Shang was up at six in the morning. The other three in the dormitory were still asleep.

He washed up and headed downstairs. Students passed him at intervals on the path outside, their young faces bright with energy.

He stopped walking. Stood still, watching each person go by. A long time passed before he moved again.

"What are you standing around staring at?"

He turned. Chao Musheng and a young man in an orange shirt were walking toward him.

"Out for breakfast?" Chao Musheng stifled a yawn. "Come on — join us."

The student in orange gave him a friendly nod. Zhao Shang smiled back and fell into step behind Chao Musheng.

"Third — this is Zhao Shang, one of the students I'm looking after." Chao Musheng noticed his roommate taking a second look. "Same surname as you. Could be family, eight hundred years back."

"Fellow kinsmen!" Third grinned. "Welcome to our school. Make yourself at home."

"Thank you." Zhao Shang deflected the warmth in the other student's gaze, at a loss for what to say back.

Family, eight hundred years ago or otherwise — impossible. People from different worlds don't intersect.

The morning crowd in the dining hall was thinner than at lunch. Chao Musheng collected breakfast for everyone still in the dormitory, then noticed Zhao Shang buying for two and correctly surmised it was for Zhang San. "First class starts at eight, in Teaching Building 4. Don't be late."

Zhao Shang nodded, started back toward the dormitory, and within a few steps caught the faint sound of a cat crying.

He stopped and looked around.

"What is it?" Chao Musheng, seeing him halt, pressed everything he was carrying into Third's arms and sent him ahead.

"A cat — I thought I heard one." Zhao Shang crouched and combed through the nearest bush with his hands. Nothing. He straightened up, a little sheepish to find Chao Musheng searching alongside him. "Maybe I was wrong."

"No — I heard it too." Chao Musheng tilted his head back and spotted a length of orange tail hanging from a branch above. "Little Tangerine — what are you doing up a tree again?"

He recognized the cat at once, moved to stand beneath the branch, and opened his arms. "Come on down."

"Mrrrow, mrrrow~"

Recognizing her person, Little Tangerine's voice immediately went soft and wheedling. She chirped at length, then dropped neatly into Chao Musheng's arms.

"How did you get covered in ink spots?"

One day apart and she'd managed this.

Chao Musheng turned her over to check, and the smile left his face. Her right front paw was visibly swollen. "Someone hit you?"

"Mrow mrow mrow!" Little Tangerine hooked her claws into his shirt and burrowed into his chest, meowing without pause — clearly lodging a formal complaint.

"Okay, okay. You're alright now." He stroked her gently, reassured himself it was only a small swelling with no bone damage, and felt the tension in his chest ease.

"What happened to Little Tangerine?" A passing student noticed her and came over. "Where did all those ink spots come from?"

"Mrr~" The same cat who had been hissing and carrying on up a tree two minutes ago extended one trembling injured paw from the safety of Chao Musheng's arms, the picture of persecuted innocence.

"She's hurt?"

"Someone hurt a cat?"

"What kind of person goes after Little Tangerine — who does that?"

Within moments a small crowd had gathered. Someone fed her treats; someone else sprayed her paw. She pressed herself into the hollow of Chao Musheng's shoulder and whimpered quietly, refusing to come down.

Zhao Shang stood just outside the circle of students, watching the young man and the small cat at its center, and felt a strange, tilted sensation — as though they were the real protagonists of this world, not the players.

"Alright, stop doing that pitiful voice at me." Chao Musheng soothed her and rang a fourth-year veterinary student he knew, a guaranteed doctoral entry, to come and take a look.

The senior arrived at a run with spectacularly disheveled hair, took one look, and declared it a superficial injury. The cat had probably been frightened as well as hurt, which was why she was being especially clingy.

"Mrr?" Little Tangerine understood none of this. Little Tangerine was busy eating her treat and pressing her face into Chao Musheng's collarbone.

Chao Musheng bought the senior breakfast by way of thanks, then carried Little Tangerine — who showed no interest whatsoever in getting down.

"Sorry to keep you waiting." He bought Zhao Shang a carton of milk. "Here. I'll see you at the teaching building at seven fifty."

"Mrrrow, mrrrow." Little Tangerine fixed her eyes on the milk carton in Zhao Shang's hands and made an exploratory swipe toward it.

Human. How dare you give food to an outsider.

"Stop that — I'm taking you to campus security to file a complaint." Chao Musheng pulled her paw back and carried her over to the security office.

If the cat's injury was accidental, that was one thing. If someone had deliberately hurt her, that was another matter entirely.

The security staff photographed Little Tangerine's injuries and fed the images into the monitoring system.

"Someone dares do something like this right after we finished installing the new tracking system." The head of security was a plump middle-aged woman with a legendary fondness for the campus animals. The sight of Little Tangerine's injury had her hammering the keyboard. "She was fine when you saw her yesterday at noon — so she was hurt sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning." She pressed the start key. "As long as it happened within range of the cameras covering her usual territory, the system will automatically flag suspicious footage."

Chao Musheng was curious. "The processing load for that kind of intelligent recognition — a system like this can't have been cheap."

"Apparently it was donated by Kunlun Enterprises. Didn't cost us anything." She smiled. "It's saved us no end of work."

"Got something!"

She clicked open the flagged clip. The timestamp and camera zone appeared on screen.

00:34. Dormitory Building 4. Object thrown from above.

Object appears to originate from Window 4, Room 404.

404?

Chao Musheng's brow furrowed. Wasn't that the room Zhao Shang and Zhang San were in?

*

"You're back, Shang-bro?" Zhang San accepted the breakfast Zhao Shang had brought, bit into a bun.

Hm. A bit cold?

Noticing Zhao Shang's expression, Zhang San decided against asking questions and put his head down to eat.

[Ding! Nutritious breakfast consumed. Health +1.]

Zhang San's eyes lit up. He finished everything on the tray without a word.

"You've got a death wish — still eating dining hall food." The vegetable player rubbed his empty stomach and quietly swallowed. He'd lost 10 health points just waking up that morning. At this rate, the instance would drain him dry before day ten arrived.

"You can't just not eat." Zhang San wasn't stupid enough to tell the others that the dining hall food was giving him health instead of taking it. He dropped his wrapper in the bin. "Starvation kills people too."

He turned and saw Zhao Shang unpacking a milk straw. "Shang-bro, how come you didn't bring one for me?"

"Someone gave it to me." Zhao Shang inserted the straw and took a sip.

[Ding! High-quality nutritious milk consumed. Health +10.]

The carton paused halfway to his lips.

Yesterday, Chao Musheng's lunch: health +5. Last night at the dining hall with Zhang San: no change. This morning's breakfast bought alongside Chao Musheng: +1. A carton of milk personally given to him by Chao Musheng: +10.

Something was becoming clear. The key to gaining health wasn't where you ate. It was Chao Musheng himself.

"Lao Jin, my study plan isn't much better than yours — are you seriously copying mine?"

"Shut your mouth." Lao Jin shoved the vegetable player aside, picked up his study plan, and sat down at the desk with it. "Pass me your pen and ink."

The dormitory beds were stacked — bed on top, desk and shelf below. Each desk came equipped with books and stationery. Zhao Shang glanced at Lao Jin's desk in passing.

The inkwell was gone.

*

Before class, Chao Musheng dropped Little Tangerine off at the academic affairs office and took his two new students to seats in the second row.

Zhang San looked up at the lectern right in front of them, then down at the textbook in his hands — a book in which he recognized every individual character and letter but which, assembled into sentences, was completely unintelligible to him. He felt the ceiling of the world lower itself onto his head.

He was a back-two-rows person by nature. Had he ever belonged in the front three rows? No. Absolutely not.

Class began. The teacher spoke with easy fluency. Students around them occasionally drifted into contemplative thought, then surfaced with the radiant expressions of people who had just received a precious gift of knowledge.

Zhang San, meanwhile, understood not a single word.

Arrays. Linked lists. Rendering.

He knew gold chains and forgetting your roots. That was about it.

No wonder the players couldn't find any horror stories. The horror story was the lecture.

From the moment class began, Chao Musheng's phone had been vibrating without pause. By the time the first break arrived, it was practically levitating.

He opened it. The hosting group chat had several hundred unread messages.

Why were the seniors — always so diligent and studious — secretly on their phones during class today?

[I can't take it anymore. How can a person like this exist. I asked him to hand in his study plan and he cried harder than if someone had died, and now the entire class thinks I'm bullying him. In all my years I have never been so humiliated.]

Chao Musheng felt genuine sympathy. The swearing alone told him how upset the senior must be.

[He's STILL CRYING. I'm losing my mind.]

[Senior, don't be upset — look at the plan I received. After you've seen it, yours won't hurt so much anymore. (image)]

[Enlightenment spelled as Enlighten-ment, dissection spelled as dis-section, not a single substantive detail about studying, just hollow slogans from start to finish — which school sent this person?]

[I've spent the whole morning trying to teach mine, and they just stare at me. My eyes have glazed over. I've tutored primary school children who gave me less trouble than this.]

[She's at it again, she's spraying the perfume again, she's asking about ghost stories again. My rival is looking at me with this face like "so this is the quality of student you're responsible for" and I can't even think about what they're saying behind my back.]

[Everyone, I want you all to sit with the question of why time travel hasn't been invented yet. If I could go back, I would absolutely not have signed up for this.]

[These students broke the spine I've spent twenty years building.]

[Completely broken!!]

Any semblance of measured professionalism had long since abandoned the group chat. It was pure emotional wreckage.

Chao Musheng closed his phone quietly and glanced at Zhang San beside him — dutifully scribbling in his textbook, but with eyes completely devoid of life.

He looked away.

Composure was everything. Embarrassing or not, as long as you kept one eye open and one eye shut, you could get through most things.

The morning only had one full lecture. After ten o'clock there were no more classes. Chao Musheng tucked two cat treats into his pocket and went to collect Little Tangerine from the academic affairs office.

"Mrrrow?" She launched herself into his arms before he'd fully come through the door.

"Come on." He scratched her ears. "I'm taking you to identify your attacker."

*

Lao Jin stormed back into the dormitory and slapped his study plan on the desk. "I am going to kill her. KILL HER."

The vegetable player shrank into his corner. Zhang San stared unseeingly at his textbook. Zhao Shang watched Lao Jin from his bunk, expression cool.

A knock at the door.

The vegetable player opened it. Chao Musheng and several unfamiliar students stood outside. He turned his most appeasing smile on Chao Musheng. "Xiao Chao — what can we do for you?"

"Mrow!" Little Tangerine launched herself out of Chao Musheng's arms and shot toward Lao Jin.

"Get away from me, you filthy animal!" Lao Jin dodged and swung his foot up to kick.

Zhao Shang raised his arm immediately, brought his elbow down across Lao Jin's body, and pressed him firmly back into his chair.

"Mrow!"

Little Tangerine arched her back and hissed at Lao Jin, then turned to Chao Musheng with a trill.

Go on, human. Destroy this creature for your king.