Off the Leash [Campus]

[Column serialization: Childhood Friends Novel, The Grassroots Prodigy] [Completed Campus Novel, Whale's Song] Please see the reader's guide below the blurb. Blurb: After Shang Xu goes from an all-around top student to a delinquent at a school full of slackers, his dad sends him to a key high school with near-military discipline and tells him to look after a "poor little thing" named Yin Lin. He only wants to get back to the top, but now he seems good at nothing and everyone hates him. Every day, he plays cat and mouse with the student discipline committee. And yet, beneath that unruly mop of hair is a handsome face that can't be hidden. When some girls invite him to fill a spot on their robotics competition team, he agrees. Teammates: "Ah, we're doomed! Let the last-minute sub pick some random part and leave it to fate!!" Shang Xu picks one. The robot performs beyond expectations, and the crowd goes wild. Shang Xu (running a hand through his hair): "Heaven really is looking out for us!" His teammates watch suspiciously as he sweeps away. The coach is determined to find out how capable he really is: "Would joining the school team kill you?" Shang Xu only wants to be a top student: "If I can't do well on my exams, I might as well be dead!" After an international robotics competition, he once swore he would never touch those metal contraptions again. Yin Lin, the formidable student discipline committee president, now has to deal with Shang Xu, a transfer student who breaks the rules in every way imaginable. At first, he thinks Shang Xu is just a troublemaking student with connections. But the more he sees him, the more he thinks he looks like the student representative he admired in middle school. Then he sees photos of him with dyed hair, tattoos, and earrings, and watches him expertly teach others to program robots... This guy he just can't figure out is annoyingly charming. What's even harder to understand is that the other guy seems to have been treating him a little too well for a long time. Though that mouth of his is still just as infuriating. 1. [Playful yet refined, roguish and flirtatious gong x tough yet tender, secretly flirtatious shou] Shang Xu is gong, Yin Lin is shou. Happy ending. 2. Daily life + competitions. The protagonist goes through a low point, but everything ends happily. The extras add stories about the couple and side characters, and differ in style from the main story. 3. Purely fictional, with no concern for logic. Theme: Everything is up to you.