TT Chapter 26. Sexy Guy

Chen Ting was momentarily dazzled by Pei Yiyao’s smile. It took him a while to snap out of it and start seriously wondering when he had become someone who could be swayed by good looks.

The moment that thought occurred to him, his expression turned unusually serious. And once the movie started, it grew even more so.

Even more serious than him was Pei Yiyao.

The two of them sat in the prime seventh-row seats, both wearing nearly identical deadpan expressions as they watched a group of teenagers on screen scream with deep, heartfelt terror. Their looks of distaste were eerily in sync.

Scarier than a horror movie was sitting through one so bad it could only be called horrifying because of the acting.

By the time they made it out of the theater, having forced themselves to sit through the entire thing, Chen Ting and Pei Yiyao felt like they had been reborn. For the first time, Pei Yiyao looked a little regretful. He should not have brought Chen Ting to a movie, but this had been the only horror film playing in that time slot.

Chen Ting, still hugging a half-finished bucket of popcorn, hesitated and said, “It… wasn’t that bad, right?”

Pei Yiyao paused. “No need to pretend.”

Seeing that hint of resignation on Pei Yiyao’s face, Chen Ting could not help the smile that tugged at his lips. “Next time you want to see a movie, just let me book the tickets. I never pick the wrong one.”

Pei Yiyao nodded. “Alright.”

Only then did Chen Ting realize that he had somehow, absentmindedly, made another agreement with Pei Yiyao. But he still owed him for the bicycle incident anyway. Debts piling up were not so bad if you just stopped thinking about them. Chen Ting was starting to let it go.

Pei Yiyao was not a particularly romantic person, so the rest of the date consisted of just strolling around and grabbing dinner. He did not talk much, but every so often, he would ask, “Are you tired?” He always walked on the side closer to the street, like a quiet knight in armor.

By the time they got back to campus, it was already nine thirty at night. But when Chen Ting returned to the dorm, he found the place completely empty. Not a soul in sight. Bai Yu and Jiang Hai were easy to guess. They were probably still buried in their studies. But where had Yang Shulin gone?

Donghu Crab King: Where are you?

YSL: At the café.
Donghu Crab King: Café?

YSL: Yeah, didn’t you take the day off? Senior is covering your shift! And he even said I could take photos!!!

Three exclamation marks made it clear how excited Yang Shulin was. Chen Ting, on the other hand, felt a little embarrassed. Sure, he had won the day off fair and square in that bet with Gao Duo, but still, having the boss himself cover your shift felt a bit over the top.

Either way, there was no way he could accept today’s wages.

That made him feel a lot lighter. Yang Shulin soon sent over a string of photos he had taken of Gao Duo filling in for him.

Now a grad student, Gao Duo had a certain mature presence that none of them could match. And with his face, he didn’t need to pose or try. He just looked good in pictures.

But when Yang Shulin finally returned to the dorm a little past ten, he looked completely dejected.

Chen Ting asked, “Didn’t he agree to let you do the interview?”

“He did! But he said all the photos I took looked bad! I shot over a hundred, and he said they were all no good. And if the photos don’t look good, he’s not in the mood to be interviewed. He won’t let me use any of them!”

Yang Shulin had never met anyone with such impossibly high standards for beauty. But now he had. No matter how he framed the shot, Gao Duo always had something to pick on. The lighting was off, the composition was wrong, the angle was unflattering. As far as he was concerned, if the photos did not capture one hundred percent of his good looks, they were no good at all.

After a long silence, Yang Shulin let out a sigh. “I’m starting to wonder how someone who cares that much about looks ended up studying archaeology.”

Chen Ting gave it some serious thought. “Maybe it’s because ancient things are beautiful too. History is beautiful. Maybe it shows that Senior Gao doesn’t just care about appearances. He values inner beauty too.”

“Good point.” Yang Shulin suddenly sat up. “Right, how did it go with Pei Yiyao today?”

Chen Ting rubbed his nose. “It was alright.”

“Oh.” Yang Shulin’s brain was still short-circuiting from being relentlessly nitpicked by Gao Duo. It took him a moment to reset before he continued, “I’m just saying, that cool guy might look cold on the outside, but he’s really good to you. Unlike Senior Gao, who looks all warm and smiley, but on the inside? Definitely dark. Fussy, moody, and impossible to please. If I ever do get that interview, I swear I’ll lose ten years of my life…”

Yang Shulin rambled on, pouring out every ounce of frustration he had bottled up from dealing with Gao Duo. But Chen Ting, hearing all this, fell into another bout of silence. He knew Pei Yiyao treated him well. Everyone could see that. But when he looked at himself, he could not think of a single thing he had done for Pei Yiyao in return.

No, no, no, no, no. He was the one chasing him in the first place. All that heart-to-heart stuff, the mutual care and concern was the kind of thing only couples were supposed to do.

Chen Ting lay on his stomach with his butt in the air, deep in thought. It was his go-to position whenever he needed to think things through. It made him feel like an ostrich, burrowing into the depths of some secret underground world.

Ever since he met Pei Yiyao, he felt like he had been stuck thinking constantly. If this went on much longer, he was going to turn into Philosopher Ting Ting.

Just then, Yang Shulin jolted upright. “Presentation! Is it our turn to present in the foreign teacher’s class tomorrow?!”

Chen Ting sat up with a start too. After counting the dates carefully, he said grimly, “I think it is.”

Presentations were a standard part of English class, right up there with roleplays. Each student, or group of students, had to take turns presenting according to their student number. They had to make a PowerPoint and give a five-to-ten-minute speech on a topic of their choice.

In a panic, they messaged their classmate Wu Yingwen, who confirmed it for them that it really was their turn. The class in question was “An Overview of English-speaking Countries,” a massive lecture course shared by several different classes. The foreign teacher had set aside two sessions just for student presentations.

Unfortunately for them, Wu Yingwen had shamelessly teamed up with their class monitor Lin Juan. That left Chen Ting and Yang Shulin, two hapless nobodies, to team up and handle it themselves.

The real problem was, they had both completely forgotten about it.

“It’s fine,” Chen Ting said, calm and composed. “I think I still have a half-finished PowerPoint on my laptop. I was going to use it for our Comprehensive English class. We can probably tweak it and use it in a pinch.”

His voice sounded steady, but the minute hand ticking toward eleven made their sense of urgency impossible to ignore.

Yang Shulin was loyal to a fault. “I’ll finish the rest of it. Ting Ting, help me look up the information.”

The two of them got to work. The sudden surge in academic energy was so intense that when Bai Yu and Jiang Hai returned late and stepped into the room, they thought they had walked into the wrong dorm.

Unable to resist, Bai Yu leaned over for a peek. As soon as he saw that full screen of headache-inducing tadpole text, he was instantly reminded of the trauma brought on by the CET-4 English exam.

“Oh shit!” Jiang Hai shared the same righteous fury. It was only after starting college that he realized how naive he had been. Thinking that majoring in science meant no more English was just as foolish as thinking that liberal arts students didn’t have to study math. What he really wanted was to say one thing to the people who came up with the rule that students had to pass CET-4 to graduate. Shit.

But none of that changed the reality. Advanced math still had to be learned, CET-4 still had to be taken, and the PowerPoint still had to be finished. Chen Ting and Yang Shulin might not have been academic overachievers, but they took their work seriously. At the very least, they were not the type to throw together a sloppy slideshow just to get it over with.

And so their all-nighter stretched on until one thirty in the morning. The hard part was not building the slides but gathering information and translating everything.

The next morning, Yang Shulin left the dorm with enormous dark circles under his eyes. When he ran into Lin Juan, she teased him on the spot. “Whoa, my dear comrade Saint Laurent, did you get tangled up in a spider’s web last night?”

Yang Shulin let out a dramatic sigh. “Alas! When Heaven is about to place a great task upon a person, it must first distress their mind, tire their limbs, starve their body… their body… what’s the next part again?”

Chen Ting replied, “Deprive them of comfort.”

“Right, deprive them of comfort!” Yang Shulin wiped away an imaginary tear of suffering, then promptly blamed the whole ordeal on Gao Duo. Chen Ting, meanwhile, was in much better shape. While Yang Shulin was dozing off in class, Chen Ting still managed to stay somewhat alert.

Naturally, the task of presenting fell to him.

Chen Ting did not mind. He was not stage-shy and had done this often enough to be used to it. So he grabbed the USB drive and headed to the podium. While he might not have had the commanding air of a seasoned speaker, his pronunciation was clear, his manner composed, and he looked pretty convincing up there.

Everything was fine, until he tried to pull up a video file midway through and, thanks to his eternally shaky hands, accidentally opened the wrong image. The moment he saw what it was, his whole body stiffened.

“Wow,” the stylish foreign teacher stood with arms crossed, letting out a genuinely impressed exclamation.

“Yoooooooooooooooo!”
The entire classroom burst into gasps and laughter, eyes locked on the screen where the image was now projected. Some even whistled loudly, adding fuel to the chaos.

Yang Shulin was frozen in shock. He had no idea how a photo of Pei Yiyao ended up in that folder, especially one from the swim meet, half-naked no less.

He had been the one to organize the USB contents at the last minute, but it was Chen Ting’s laptop. Why would it have that kind of photo on it?

Could it be… were all those rumors in the group chat actually true? Was Ting Ting really..

Wait a second.
A terrible realization hit him. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

Wasn’t that the photo he had sent Chen Ting himself? And hadn’t he also sent him the video…?

Yang Shulin’s hands began trembling too, as if he had already been tied to a pillar of public shame, a condemned sinner in the annals of history. He looked at Chen Ting, filled with regret.

Ting Ting, I’ve wronged you! I’m so sorry!

Chen Ting looked right back at him, smiling faintly.

Ting Ting doesn’t want to hear it.

With lightning-fast reflexes, he deleted the image, cleared his throat, and, under the barrage of teasing stares from the whole class, fought hard to keep his ears from turning red. He straightened up and said solemnly, “I was just photoshopping something for him. Just PS.”

“Right, right, I took that photo!” Yang Shulin chimed in quickly, face even redder than Chen Ting’s, looking even more guilty than the actual culprit.

The entire class erupted with laughter. Whether they were clapping for Chen Ting’s quick thinking or for Pei Yiyao’s impressive physique, no one could really say.

The foreign teacher, luckily, had a good sense of humor. He made a few light-hearted comments, and the whole incident was brushed aside. But Chen Ting knew this was not over. He was definitely going to challenge Saint Laurent to a duel.

Meanwhile, over in the physics department, Monday was a fully packed day. Classes ran from morning to evening. By the time the gossip reached their side of campus, it was nearly sundown. Pei Yiyao was just packing up his things, debating whether to go find Chen Ting.

That was when one of his roommates suddenly burst out laughing, drawing attention from everyone nearby.

“Hahahahahaha! Sexy guy! Sexy guy! This is too much!”

He was laughing so hard he forgot himself, until he realized the person in question was standing right next to him. He quickly tried to stifle his grin and asked Pei Yiyao cautiously,

“Hey, uh… did you hear what happened in the English class today?”

“What happened?”

Pei Yiyao was always focused in class. Unless something urgent came up, he rarely checked his phone.

“It’s that Chen Ting guy… aren’t you two close? He was doing a PowerPoint presentation and accidentally included your photo. The one from the swim meet…”

“Oh.”

“Oh? That’s it?”

Pei Yiyao gave him a glance, then went back to packing.

His roommate could only marvel at how unbothered he was. Since the person involved did not seem to care, he had no choice but to drop the subject.

But just as Pei Yiyao was leaving, he turned back and asked, “Sexy guy?”

“Uh… that’s what people said about the photo. It wasn’t me, I swear! That’s what everyone on Moments is calling you!”

Six-pack abs. Perfect body. You’re worth it.