Lunch break ended, and classes resumed.
In most schools, variations of the same ranking exist — the Class Beauty Ranking.
The Class Beauty Ranking was never posted on the bulletin board, but at Fifth High School, it spread faster than report cards.
Every girl’s name was on it.
Only the boys were eligible to receive the list.
They were the judges.
Rating the names on that list was treated like a sacred mission.
The higher the score behind a name, the more recognition she received from the boys, naturally earning her the title of “Class Beauty.”
Aside from the scores, there were various comments.
Zhou Jingyi had the largest chest, Wang Xinyu was the most provocative, Shi Miaomiao had the longest legs, and so on…
The scoring was merciless.
In fact, besides this public list that any boy could participate in, an underground list existed as well.
That thing only circulated among the most delinquent boys.
Its name was far more direct — the Fuck Buddy List.
Of course, that was the stuff of legends.
At least, Gu Yebai had never seen it.
His social standing dictated that he would never be invited into those circles.
Moreover, he wasn’t interested.
Gu Yebai came to school simply to study.
Everything else was irrelevant to him.
One day, he was determined to leave this place where people lacked even the most basic manners.
“Hey, Yebai, stop studying. Time to vote.”
The math class was still in session.
The student in the seat in front of him acted as if the teacher on the podium was invisible, tossing a small crumpled ball of paper onto his desk.
At the top of the paper, a line was written in bold ink: [Class Beauty Ranking. Fifth Edition].
The top contenders for the title were largely the same as previous lists.
The usual names were followed by a barrage of scores and comments from the boys, interspersed with a fair amount of vulgarity.
It was childish.
But in such an environment, it wasn’t easy to remain a bystander.
If you didn’t participate, you were called pretentious.
If you didn’t take a stand, you were treated like an outsider.
And outsiders were usually the first ones targeted.
Gu Yebai picked up his pen in silence.
Behind a girl’s name that had “zero votes,” he marked one point.
Her name was Ai Lian.
Although her vote count was zero, there were plenty of comments.
They were all negative, making her the primary target of the entire class’s ridicule.
Even comments like “plain and pathetic” were considered polite.
Her nicknames included, but were not limited to, “The Oil Queen,” “Barnacle Girl,” and “The Vomit Girl”…
Ai Lian was a pitiful soul.
She always sat in the corner of the classroom.
No one had ever seen her parents, so everyone said she was an orphan.
Her face was covered in freckles.
They weren’t the cute, decorative kind, but dense patches that smothered her nose and cheeks like permanent stains that could never be washed away.
Her lips were chapped and pale, and her eyes lacked any spark.
Most of her face was obscured by round-framed glasses with absurdly thick lenses and tiny scratches along the edges.
Her hair always looked like it hadn’t been washed in ages.
Her bangs collapsed over her eyes, and the ends were often knotted, sticking to the collar of her school uniform.
In Gu Yebai’s memory, Ai Lian hadn’t always been this disheveled.
She had been slowly ground down and dirtied by school bullying.
It started with harmless little gestures.
The girls formed small cliques of three or five, and as soon as Ai Lian approached, they would all fall silent and exchange looks.
Once she left, they would whisper behind her back in voices just loud enough for her to hear: “She’s so disgusting.”
“Exactly. She smells weird.”
Later, it escalated beyond verbal abuse.
The homework she worked so hard to finish would be maliciously defaced, and her schoolbag would be kicked into the hallway.
Even more sinister was how they would secretly use glue to stick dead cockroaches and spiders to the inside of her clothes while she was away.
When she discovered them and screamed, the classroom would erupt in laughter.
Eventually, they skipped the subtleness and got physical.
The reason her hair was always greasy wasn’t because of poor hygiene.
The girls would wait until she was in the restroom and then pour dirty water used to rinse mops over her head, claiming they were helping her wash her hair.
Over time, she became what she was now.
She had fallen to the absolute bottom of the class hierarchy.
In this social ecosystem, dressing cleanly would be seen as a form of rebellion, inviting even more vicious targeting.
She had learned to be a little dirtier and more tattered, turning herself into a lump of clay for the bullies to knead as they pleased.
And yet, Gu Yebai chose to give his vote to this very Ai Lian.
Looks are innate, and wealth is innate.
Yet, most people treat these things they never worked for as capital to brag about, using them to humiliate others and prove their own superiority.
It made Gu Yebai feel sick.
Gu Yebai had seen Ai Lian studying hard more than once.
She was one of the few people in class who actually wanted to learn.
She was likely the same type of person as him — someone desperate to leave Linchuan through academic effort and go somewhere far away.
Giving her a vote was Gu Yebai’s way of rejecting the entire voting process and showing a sliver of sympathy for Ai Lian’s plight.
“Holy crap!”
Just as Gu Yebai cast his vote for Ai Lian, the “Class Beauty Ranking” paper was snatched away by a boy.
“Someone actually voted for Ai Lian!”
“What? Ai Lian can actually get a vote?”
“Nice taste, my friend.”
In truth, aside from the few girls who were actually decent-looking, most of the girls didn’t have a single vote.
Even they were surprised.
Then, it started…
“Get together!” the boys in the back rows jeered.
“Kiss her!”
“I wish you a hundred years of happiness! Locked together forever!”
“Ai Lian, Gu Yebai is your husband now. I wish you many children and grandchildren.”
The noisy laughter flooded the classroom like a tide.
The math teacher on the podium kept his back to the rowdy students, continuing to mutter in a voice as thin as a mosquito: “And so, through the derivative, what is the correct answer?”
“That’s right, the correct answer is one.”
“Come on, everyone, let’s move on to the next problem.”
Even though not a single student was listening, he still managed to keep the lecture going.
In a way, he had a talent for stand-up comedy.
Gu Yebai scanned his jeering classmates.
He had thought an anonymous vote might offer Ai Lian a bit of protection, making the girls who continued to bully her feel a bit of wariness toward the “unknown” boy who voted for her.
He wanted her to be able to borrow that perceived influence.
But unfortunately, he had been found out.
“It’s a consolation prize. Do you guys know about horse racing? I’m the type who likes to bet on the dark horse.”
“Enough, don’t explain. Explanations are just cover-ups, and cover-ups are the truth!”
“If you like her, say it out loud! Hurry up and call her your wife!”
“It’s not a bad deal, kid. Look at Ai Lian’s chest; it’s actually pretty big, hahaha! Looks like at least a C-cup.”
The boys were having a field day, getting more excited the more they made a scene.
In their circle, Ai Lian was a joke, a slur.
“Ai Lian is your wife!”
“Shut up, she’s your wife.”
People who could take a joke would just talk back, laugh, and move on.
Those who couldn’t would flip tables and fight.
Someone had even been hospitalized after such a fight, which went to show how much of a “lethal weapon” Ai Lian’s name was.
Now, they watched with a voyeuristic curiosity, waiting for Gu Yebai to show a look of resistance, shame, or embarrassment.
It would be a rare bit of entertainment in their boring school lives.
Gu Yebai stood up.
“Wife!”
There was no resistance.
His tone was actually nonchalant.
The classroom fell silent for a moment.
The air seemed to freeze into an invisible line.
A second later, the room erupted in laughter.
Gu Yebai even gave a cooperative bow, like a comedian finishing an improvised performance.
It really didn’t matter to him.
He didn’t care about a person’s beauty or ugliness.
Looks were innate, but a person could make up for natural deficiencies through effort.
Perhaps Ai Lian would go further in the future and leave this hellhole of Linchuan just like him.
As Gu Yebai sat back down, he inadvertently glanced at Ai Lian again, wanting to give her an encouraging look to help her feel a bit better during her bullied days.
‘Huh?’
Maybe he saw it wrong.
Ai Lian’s pupils, hidden behind those thick lenses, didn’t seem to be a normal black.
Instead…
‘Are they purple?’
‘Are those really human pupils?’
He rubbed his eyes and looked again.
Sure enough, Ai Lian had black pupils — the normal pupils a human being should have.