It wasn’t that he wanted to look; it was just that the handwriting was simply too hard to ignore.

The strokes were powerful and a bit cursive. Samuel Clark himself was a fan of “cursive script,” but this was the kind of cursive that showed real skill at a glance—totally different from his own random scrawls.

Some classmates had already started praising it: “The study god’s handwriting… Even if I practiced copybooks for ten years, I couldn’t write like this. Is this even humanly possible?”

“Enough with the jokes,” the teacher said, looking at Samuel Clark. “I don’t expect you all to write like this. I just hope that certain students in our class can write clearly enough for people to understand. If you can’t solve the problems, fine, but you won’t even get presentation points.”

Samuel Clark, the student who couldn’t get presentation points, folded up the test paper and stuffed it into his desk.

Samuel Clark’s school life had always been plain and dull.

Sleeping, playing games, standing in the hallway as punishment.

There was no fourth possibility.

During the last biology class of the afternoon, the teacher asked him to stand up and answer a question.

Samuel Clark tossed his phone into his desk and stood up a beat late. “Teacher, I didn’t catch that. Could you say it again?”

The biology teacher had already been holding back anger after watching this student sit in the corner and play on his phone for most of the class. Now, her face turned cold. “It’s in the book. Do you even know which page we’re on?” She tried to give him a hint, “Page four.”

Samuel Clark picked up his English book and flipped a few pages. “Fill in the blanks?”

“……”

The whole class fell silent.

“Oh,” Samuel Clark seemed to realize something from the dead silence, “this isn’t English class?”

Two minutes later, Samuel Clark walked out of the classroom with his phone and a power bank he’d borrowed from his deskmate. He leaned against the railing, and through the open classroom door, happened to make eye contact with a student from Class Six next door.

His phone vibrated twice.

It was a message from David Bolton.

- Boss, standing in the hallway again?

- Get lost.

- I thought with such a distance between our classes, I wouldn’t see you much, but it turns out every time I look out into the hallway, there you are, standing tall.

- Why don’t you come out and stand for a bit? You’ll get an even better view of me.

- No need for that… I’ll just wave at you, that’s enough. Can you see me?

Samuel Clark looked up and saw a hand really sticking out by the window at the end of the hallway.

He lowered his head again and replied: Damn, are you an idiot?

David Bolton asked again: Going to the internet café tonight? Same place?

Samuel Clark didn’t reply right away. He exited the chat, and in his recent contacts, there was a quiet entry labeled “Mom.”

The message was from two days ago.

[Mom]: Have you arrived at school?

[Mom]: I wanted you to live at home but you refused. Just focus on your classes. I won’t bother you about anything else. If you really can’t study, at least graduate smoothly, okay?

[Mom]: You’re in your second year of high school now. I’m not asking you to study for me. What are you planning to do with your life if you keep this up?!

Samuel Clark glanced at it twice, his expression unchanged, then replied to David Bolton with a simple “Okay.”

After replying, he put his phone back in his pocket, flexed his fingers, and unconsciously pressed his index finger against the second knuckle of his thumb—crack.

The biology teacher was writing on the board and happened to glance outside, noticing the boy in the hallway slouching against the railing as if he had no bones. She frowned and looked away.

Ring, ring, ring—

The bell for dismissal rang.

The biology teacher put down the chalk. “Alright, class dismissed. I’ve had the class rep take photos of the extra questions and send them to the group… And you out there, come back in.” She glanced at the hallway again.

The hallway was empty—no one was there. Samuel Clark had already left right as the bell rang.

Near the school was an old residential area. Outside the winding alleys with white walls and gray tiles, a commercial street had sprung up: accessory shops, snack stores… and an underground internet café where you didn’t need an ID to get online.

The internet café was hidden away. You entered through the back door of a small restaurant, went up to the second floor, and pushed open a glass door.

Samuel Clark was a regular at that internet café.

David Bolton didn’t live on campus. By the time he and a few buddies rushed over with their bags, Samuel Clark had already claimed the most secluded computer. This guy wasn’t even gaming—he had headphones on, one leg propped up on the edge of the chair, curled up watching a movie.

“What’s this? There’s no plot at all,” David Bolton paid, tossed his bag on the floor, and while waiting for his computer to boot up, leaned over to look at Samuel Clark’s screen. After a while, he realized he couldn’t make sense of it, so he checked the title instead. “…‘BBC: The Power of Art’? Damn, a documentary?”

Samuel Clark dragged the progress bar with one hand.

David Bolton asked, soulfully, “You come to the internet café just to watch this? Why not just watch the news broadcast?”

Samuel Clark didn’t look like he was watching the documentary all that seriously. He pushed his headphones back a bit to hear David Bolton better. “The news broadcast is at seven. It hasn’t started yet.”

David Bolton: “……”

Samuel Clark closed the documentary. “I’m kidding. Let’s play.”