Evan Lin walked out of the conference room and headed straight for Class 12, hands in his pockets. To Lynn Chen, his back looked as lazy and unruly as ever.
Just a few steps out of the conference room was the stairwell. Eric Yu trailed behind Lynn Chen for a bit, but didn’t dare follow all the way—he shot Evan a vicious glare, then hurried back to Class 2.
The other students, too, kept their distance from Evan—some deliberately, some subconsciously—quietly hoping he hadn’t taken their earlier comments to heart. After all, getting beaten up in public would be seriously humiliating.
The Experimental Class was a whole floor above the regular classes.
But after reaching the regular class floor, Lynn Chen, almost without thinking, ended up following Evan toward Class 12 for quite a while.
"Aren’t you going back to class?"
Evan paused, turned around, and looked at Lynn Chen behind him. "You’re not heading back to class?" he asked.
When Evan stopped, Lynn Chen suddenly snapped out of it and realized she’d gone the wrong way. She cursed herself for spacing out, but when Evan looked at her, she forced herself to keep a calm face.
"You hit someone again just now!"
Lynn Chen frowned. "Can’t you just talk things out? Why do you always have to use your fists?"
"He was asking for it. I already went easy on him," Evan replied coolly, meeting Lynn’s eyes.
"But you can’t just hit people! It’s wrong. If the school really decides to go after you and expels you in senior year, you won’t be able to take the college entrance exam. Joy Zheng would be devastated!"
"Even if you don’t care about yourself, you should at least think about how Joy Zheng would feel!"
Lynn was getting anxious—she really couldn’t stand seeing Evan get into fights.
But after she finished, Evan just stared at her in silence, his eyes calm and distant. Lynn’s heart skipped a beat, and she instantly regretted saying anything.
The Evan standing here wasn’t the same as before. Back then, if he heard Lynn’s words, he’d probably give an awkward smile, scratch his head, and admit he was wrong.
But now, Evan was tougher, more mature, and way more reckless in how he did things.
Lynn’s gaze dimmed a little. Her heart felt hollow and sour.
Seeing Evan stay silent, Lynn stopped hoping she could change his mind. Right now, she just felt like a helpless clown.
A breeze swept through the corridor.
She gently brushed her cheek.
Lynn Chen lowered her head a little, her bangs lifting as she looked down. Getting no response, she was about to walk away.
He probably hates me even more now, right?
That’s what Lynn was thinking, a bitter smile on her lips, feeling more lost than ever.
"Director Ben Lu doesn’t have the guts or the power to expel me. Besides, my grades are enough to change his mind."
Evan spoke in a calm, flat voice.
Of course.
Hearing that, Lynn felt even worse.
Evan still treated her words like background noise.
By now, students in several nearby classrooms had noticed Evan and Lynn standing face to face in the corridor.
Most of them were too far away to hear what they were saying.
Lynn looked lost and defeated, her eyes rimmed with red.
"But I can promise you one thing: until senior year ends, I won’t lay a hand on anyone inside Capitalview First High School."
Evan’s voice was calm as his gaze fell on Lynn, who was still hanging her head.
"Huh?"
Lynn’s disappointed eyes suddenly flickered. Hearing Evan’s words, she looked up, confused and surprised.
So this... counts as a promise to me?
Lynn stared blankly at Evan, who stood five steps away. He still looked as indifferent as ever, like nothing in the world could shake him.
"You can go back to class now."
Evan nodded slightly to Lynn, then turned and walked toward Class 12.
Lynn watched as Evan walked up to the door of Class 12, knocked once, and disappeared inside.
Standing in the empty corridor, Lynn lingered for a long time, dazed. After a while, she sniffled, rubbed her red eyes with the back of her hand, and found that Evan’s words had somehow made her feel better.
"You can’t break your promise, okay?"
Muttering to herself, Lynn broke into a smile, feeling a strange warmth inside.
Still, she knew deep down that Evan’s promise might just be because he was tired of her nagging—or maybe because she was Lynn Chen, or because she was Ms. Lu’s daughter, or simply because she was a girl. He couldn’t hit her, so he compromised.
Even so, Lynn instantly felt relieved. She didn’t linger any longer—she turned and jogged toward the stairwell, needing to hurry back to class.
But the smile on her face caught the attention of several boys from nearby classes.
Maybe those boys would never forget that afternoon in senior year—a beautiful girl in the empty hallway, her lips curved in a happy smile, her profile radiant.
With every step, it was like she was walking right into their hearts. Maybe that’s what youth and beauty really are.
Evan went back to class.
This period was English class.
The English teacher was a man. He’d never really figured out Evan’s grades, always assuming he was just a hopeless slacker, so he preferred to ignore Evan altogether.
But this time, Evan had shocked everyone by scoring 125 on the monthly English exam.
A 125 wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t bad either. When the teacher saw Evan’s score, he reviewed the test paper and realized what made Evan stand out.
Most of the mistakes were in listening and the points lost were from the essay. For all the other question types, Evan’s accuracy was over ninety-five percent.
And Evan had finished the test in less than an hour, as the teacher confirmed with Bai Yang.
This kid has potential!
"Evan Lin did great! If you keep working hard, you can do even better next time!"
As Evan walked past the classroom door on his way to his seat, the English teacher called out in a high, syrupy voice.
The voice was so over-the-top that it made a lot of students in Class 12 cringe.
The English teacher was especially pleased with Evan—his gaze even seemed a little warm.
The look made Evan uncomfortable, and the teacher’s words left him feeling weird. If he hadn’t just promised Lynn Chen not to fight at school, he would’ve loved to throw this teacher out of the classroom.
Evan sat down, letting out a sigh.
Most of the students in Class 12 just found it strange—they couldn’t understand why the English teacher was suddenly being so nice to Evan.