Playing Nice [Campus]

Two of Xilin's most famous rival high schools have "merged."

After the merger, the top troublemaker from each school's lowest-ranked crowd and the perennial academic champion were assigned to the same dorm room.

Song Yuan leaned against the bathroom wall. His new roommate came in, radiating more chill than the air conditioner, but Song Yuan didn't leave. "Want to talk?"

The boy looked up at him, his gaze light, his long, straight lashes conveying indifference.

The famously tough Song Yuan had tried to show some kindness and only humiliated himself. His face darkened, and from then on he treated the other boy like air.

Song Yuan never thought his new roommate, who wouldn't even speak to him, felt anything for him beyond what a stranger might.

Until one evening study session, when a teacher accused him of smoking. A cigarette butt someone had dropped on the floor was damning evidence, and he was too lazy to argue. He was about to admit it when the boy stepped in front of him. "I smoked."

That night, Song Yuan dreamed about Ling Yang all night.

When he woke up, Song Yuan climbed into the other boy's bed.

*

Ling Yang had a secret.

The taciturn, arrogant top student was actually a socially anxious person with hearing loss in his left ear.

So he couldn't hear what Song Yuan, who sat to his left, said to him.

He once thought nobody would ever discover this secret.

Until that night, when the troublemaking Song Yuan, who hadn't caused trouble in a long time, lifted the brick in his hand to smash it into someone. Before he did, he turned and whispered into Ling Yang's perfectly good right ear, "Want to go wild?"

Like the sun rising from the frozen dark.

The boy, who had always followed the rules and never stepped out of line, got into the fiercest fight of his life in his school uniform.

Just before dawn, a breeze, gentle and silent, brushed his ear. "Can you hear me now?"

I never heard the way you looked at me in the dark, or the countless murmurs buried beneath the rubble.

But from this moment on, I can always hear the ceaseless beat of your heart, loving me.

Fate gave me many hardships, so I carved the abyss into a soaring blue sky for you.

[An outgoing, cheeky top student who's a tough guy in public, with a former green-tea, delicate young master as the bottom] Song Yuan x [The iceberg is just a shield for an introvert] Ling Yang. Sweet romance, first love for both~

Theme: Fate gave me many hardships, so I carved the abyss into a soaring blue sky for you.