Bite Your Fingertips

24th –【Bet】

The taxi stopped outside of a villa area in South Island.

In the car’s back seat, Chu Yu was leaning on Lu Shi’s shoulder with his eyes closed and breathing smooth; he showed no signs of waking up.

Lu Shi lowered his eyes and glanced at Chu Yu’s hair whorl. “I know you’re awake.”

No movements.

Lu Shi spoke again, “Five minutes ago, I saw you open your eyes then quickly close them again.”

Even if he was exposed, Chu Yu still kept his composure.

After a few seconds, he sat up slowly, rubbed his eyes, and pretended that he just woke up as he looked around with a confused expression. “We’re here?”

Chu Yu’s words carried the bafflement of being awakened, while he wasn’t quite calm in his heart— how did I end up falling asleep on Lu Shi’s shoulder? I even slept all the way!

When he’d opened his eyes, he found that he’d been sleeping on Lu Shi’s shoulder and was so frightened that he’d quickly closed his eyes again!

Lu Shi watched his earnest play.

He recalled the event in the corridor outside their classroom where Chu Yu had acted dizzy.

His acting skills hadn’t improved and were as poor as back then.

Chu Yu’s family owned a famous mansion in Green Island, S City. Their entire estate area occupied nearly 50,000 square meters of land, and only 18 villas had been built upon it. Except for the cries of insects, almost no human voices could be heard. The more one walked in, the quieter it was.

The street lamp stretched the shadows of the two boys obliquely.

Lu Shi tilted his head and saw Chu Yu’s head drooping, his thoughts unknown.

He remarked, “Since coming back from Qingchuan River you’ve been in a daze.”

Chu Yu returned to his senses, but didn’t respond to the statement. “What?”

“What’s going on?”

Was it… because I thought there was something in his heart that I insisted on sending him back?

“Actually,” Chu Yu stared at the messy shadow of the tree on the ground, “actually, it’s nothing, it’s really fine, wait, no, there is something.” He tangled for a while until he said, “Lu Shi.”

“Hm?”

“Let’s discuss a serious topic!”

Chu Yu felt very determined, and a bit inexplicably ashamed, but on the way back from Qingchuan River, his mind had revolved entirely around this.

“Do-do you have any goals?”

Lu Shi put his hands in his pockets. His back was very straight as he looked down at Chu Yu and answered, “Yes.”

Chu Yu’s eyes widened slightly with curiosity. “What’s your goal? Take first place in a nationwide race? Enroll in a superb university and study abroad? Or make a lot of money? Maybe starting a business or conducting some kind of very powerful and cutting-edge scientific research?”

“Neither.”

Sure enough, a study god’s thinking was impossible to be deciphered by a slacker.

Chu Yu held his breath. “Then?”

Lu Shi answered, “I won’t tell you.”

??

“Ok.”

Lu Shi didn’t want to say it, so Chu Yu didn’t ask any more questions. He was out of it for a while, appearing discontent. “Actually, I was listening to Shitou and Zhu Zhifei chatting today and I suddenly wondered what my goal was. This question is quite broad with not much of a practical significance, but I just- just suddenly realized that in the past 17 years of my life, I seemed to have no goals. When I thought about it this way, I felt a little perplexed. Haha, isn’t this particularly unreasonable?”

“Why do you have no goals?”

“It might be because of this— but it’s true that no matter what I want, I obtain it very easily.”

Chu Yu gave an example. “Let’s say I’m an elementary student and my goal is to buy an action figure. Another kid would become very economical and save the week’s pocket money, but my pocket money is more than enough, so I don’t need to save up at all and can buy a bunch just by swiping my card.”

“There’s also this sister surnamed Lin who took good care of me. Her goal is to inherit her father’s business and expand their corporation’s territory, so she has always worked hard. She’ll definitely achieve this goal in the future.”

Watching the people walking by, Lu Shi seemed to see a familiar shadow.

He – once before – apparently also had the same perplexity.

Without being perfunctory, Lu Shi seriously asked, “Have you ever thought about inheriting your family business?”

As if prodded, Chu Yu waved his hands repeatedly. “My brother and sister are very talented. Inheriting the family business or anything, it doesn’t need me at all and I’m also not interested.”

“Are you not interested in it yourself, or did someone tell you not to be interested?”

Chu Yu was startled. “What do you mean?”

Lu Shi put it bluntly, “A lot of people must’ve told you that since you’re the youngest, you don’t need to inherit your family business; you don’t need to be excellent nor do you need to work hard.”

“How did you know?” Chu Yu deliberately relaxed his tone. “It’s indeed like this. Many elders, including Aunt Lan who took care of me while growing up, say so. My friend, He Zhihao, says the same as well.”

He also remembered that He Zhihao had once told him enviously, ‘Chu Yu, your life’s really good. Your family’s wealth has accumulated for so many years, your mother’s skills are remarkable, and your brother and sister have fully inherited your mother’s brain and skills. Most importantly, they don’t ask you to learn this and that! In any case, in this life, you don’t have to worry about eating, drinking, and having fun. Even if you spend money every day, you’ll have enough to waste for a lifetime!’

Chu Yu thought the same way before.

That even if the sky fell, his turn to support it would never come.

He knew that many people instilled this idea in him in order to avoid the embarrassing situation of an inner strife. Plus, he himself didn’t possess the desire to compete for family property, feeling that doing the things he liked was enough to make every day of his life happy.

As for exerting effort, working hard, and setting goals to achieve, he’d never considered these.

Therefore, after listening to Zhu Zhifei and Wei Guanglei’s conversation, he suddenly realized— it turns out there’s such a way to exist. 

Looking back at his first 17 years, it seemed as if he’d treaded life in a muddle-headed manner, retaining nothing.

Relaxing his clenched fingers, Chu Yu paused, and when he looked at Lu Shi he asked, “There’s a problem with this kind of thinking, right?”

In his view, he was completely at a loss, as if he encountered a problem he couldn’t solve. He subconsciously sought out Lu Shi and wanted to receive answers or suggestions from him.

Unconsciously being dependent.

Lu Shi returned his gaze but didn’t answer directly. Instead, he said, “If I say that it’s right or wrong, it would be of no significance. Only you can answer this question.”

“Alright.”

Chu Yu’s eyes darkened and he hurriedly walked two steps. When he reached Lu Shi, he turned around and walked backwards step by step as he questioned Lu Shi, “You really can’t tell me your goal? Really really?”

“Can’t.”

Lu Shi’s countenance was dark, as if concealing a vortex. The backlight made it difficult to distinguish the emotions in his eyes.

He stated in a soft and hoarse voice, “It’ll scare you.”

Chu Yu suddenly didn’t dare speak.

He felt that the Lu Shi who said these four words made him inexplicably feel a chill. In his plain and clear tone, he seemed to be suppressing a wave of manic depression.

He remembered what Wei Guanglei had said.

Lu Shi wouldn’t race only for the money, but more for a stimulus— a stimulus that could serve as an outlet for the hostility in his heart.

So, what did Lu Shi… experience before?

The topic ended, and until they arrived at the door of Chu Yu’s house, the two of them no longer spoke.

Stopping, Chu Yu pointed to the white building with a lamp behind him. “Here’s my house. You go home quickly, otherwise the sun will come up. Thank you.”

Seeing Lu Shi turn to leave, Chu Yu stopped him again. “Wait!”

Lu Shi looked at him. “Hm?”

Chu Yu didn’t know what to say for a moment before his lips moved and he squeezed out a line, “Be careful!”

On Sunday night, Chu Yu returned to school.

He first watered the pot of Strelitzia next to the window. Hearing the ping of his phone, Chu Yu reached for it and opened to find that it was their class group chat.

[Commoner-Li Hua]: Blackjack, raise your little hands if you want to play!

[Study Committee Member-Fang Ziqi]: Venue, my bedroom. Come on, friends!

Blackjack? Chu Yu typed.

[School Flower-Chu Yu]: Raising hand, I’ll be there soon!

The study committee member Fang Ziqi lived downstairs from Chu Yu in a two-person room.

When he went in, he found out that Fang Ziqi’s roommate turned out to be Dream-Ge. Inside, Zhang Yueshan, Li Hua, as well as someone called Guan Yiyang were there.

The two made eye contact. Guan Yiyang averted his gaze and didn’t look at Chu Yu again.

Chu Yu didn’t care and pushed open the door to enter. “Applying to join the battle!”

“Application approved. Welcome to the battlefield recruit!” Fang Ziqi beamingly gestured. “School Flower, there’s peanuts, melon seeds, and pistachios, what do you want to eat?”

“Melon seeds!”

”Okie dokie!”

Chu Yu wasn’t familiar with the Study Committee Member whose dialogue only consisted of ‘Quick quick quick, hand over your homework!’ and ‘At once! But wait until I finish copying the last question!’ This facet.

However, Zhang Yueshan had passed along gossip regarding him.

It was said that the Study Committee Member took answering questions as nourishment of life and learning as magic. During the final exam last semester, he moved forward five places in one breath. After receiving the results, because of his excessive emotions, he laughed too wildly and directly got facial paralysis with a crooked mouth and eyes. He spent the entire summer vacation in the hospital with an infusion and enduring acupuncture treatment, but he managed to save his faceCould be taken literally and metaphorically. just before the start of school.

Chu Yu was deeply impressed by this!

Holding the bag of melon seeds thrown by Fang Ziqi, Chu Yu stood beside the table and watched them play a game of blackjack. Soon, he became so scared that he was cracking melon seeds in a trance.

A good gambling game simply became a math problem for this gang of top students!

In the new game, Fang Ziqi was the banker and Guan Yiyang the challenger.

Several rounds later, Chu Yu, who was watching amidst the clouds and mist, saw that Zhang Yueshan was holding a notebook and calculating with the swish of his pen. “…There are still 43 cards left in the poker. If Fang Ziqi doesn’t want to lose a point, the next card to appear has to be a 4. 4 out of 43, the probability is 9%!”

Li Hua threw away his draft paper and gave a more precise number. “The 4 might be held by Guan Yiyang, so the probability is between 6.97% and 9%!”

Chu Yu grabbed a melon seed. “This can all be calculated?”

Zhang Yueshan had yet to answer when Guan Yiyang squeezed his cards and with mockery in his eyes, he turned his head towards Chu Yu to say, “You really can’t count. Blackjack isn’t only a card game, but also a game involving very complex probability calculations. It’s also positively related to the player’s mental arithmetic ability.”

“But as for classmate Chu Yu, apart from knowing three plus two equals five, do you not understand anything else? Regardless, you don’t need to figure out how it works. You have a lot of money anyway, it would be fine if you just gave money whenever you lost.”

Guan Yiyang said such things in a normal tone of voice.

The whole bedroom went dead silent as if the mute button had been pressed.

staff shenanigans Xena's pity partySo this is the start of the VIP chaps ??? If you experienced buying chaps on jjwxc before, you know the text can’t be copy-pasted unlike the first free chapters. It was so hard moving the raws so I went to aggregator sites (ofc i bought the entire VIP chaps first) then I discovered that some sites plagiarized way before and thus retained the first, bare writing of the author. I compared it manually to the VIP chapter I bought until my eyes turned bloodshot and my brain cells clamored for sleep and discovered a lot of differences.

This first part of this chapter only had two very minor changes so I won’t point it out, but the next part/s I would probably highlight at the end what the author changed so you can see how the author and the chap evolved. However, this would only be for this one time, I learned my lesson so I will strive to translate from the original texts instead of going to aggregator sites *bows* *sad crying dolphin noises*. Hence, pls support the author by buying the VIP chapters~ And a tip: download the app and pay coins from there after you’ve topped them up on the website via paypal, it’s much cheaper. Aiya, thank you kind reader for reading until the end of my rant hahhaha

• 1Could be taken literally and metaphorically.