Dragon Raja; Chapter 52: The City of Bronze (3)

Dragon Raja

Lu Mingfei thought it was all ridiculous. No wonder the former “S” grade senior committed suicide. However, he had already answered eight questions, so he was a vested interest. He spit twice in his palm and rubbed it on his trouser legs. When he looked at it again, there was only a faint blue ink stain in his palm. He smiled smugly in his heart, feeling the joy of being sober while everyone else is drunk, and singing while you are jumping into the river. Anyway, there was still a lot of time left, so he didn’t bother to care about Kiran, the loser, and traced the Korean letters on the desk with a pencil.

When he was in primary school, he would draw a turtle on the back of his math test paper after finishing all the questions to kill time, without checking his calculations. He had not changed this habit for many years… When he thought of this, he was stunned for a moment, and his memory was a little fuzzy. He remembered that his grades were always so-so, so how could he be so lazy to draw a turtle on the test paper? In his memory, every time before handing in the paper, he would look at the answers to the multiple-choice questions from his deskmate and fill them in before hurriedly handing in the paper. But why was the scene of him drawing a turtle on the dim paper in the afternoon when the sun shone on him so clear?

He felt a bit of a headache. So many things had happened in these days that his mind was a bit confused.

While he was casually filling the circles of the “keychains” with solid colors, he stole a glance at the girl. He couldn’t believe there was another normal person in the room besides him—could there be a second “fake hybrid” mixed in? When everyone else was going crazy, only her back was as straight as a bamboo shoot, answering the questions normally like Lu Mingfei.

Lu Mingfei wondered if Finger would sell the answer twice. Judging from Finger’s poverty and shameless style, it was not impossible.

Someone was sitting on the desk behind the girl, looking at Lu Mingfei. It was a well-behaved-looking boy, swinging his legs, wearing white square-toed leather shoes, a black suit, a white silk scarf, and a pair of faintly golden eyes.

How did he get here? Lu Mingfei was shocked. The boy, who seemed to linger like a haunting spirit, was here again—how had he entered the exam room, or had he always been hiding among the students?

The boy slowly waved at Lu Mingfei with a gentle, angelic smile. The afternoon sun shone on his back, casting a long shadow that stretched all the way to Lu Mingfei. Lu Mingfei felt he couldn’t refuse the invitation. He pushed away his desk and walked towards the boy, eventually holding his hand. The boy hopped off the desk, moving lightly, leading Lu Mingfei to the window like a man and a woman in a court dance, with Lu Mingfei feeling like he was following the boy’s lead in the dance.

The boy gracefully climbed onto the windowsill, sitting with his legs dangling outside. Lu Mingfei hesitated, then joined him, sitting beside him. In the glow of the setting sun, Lu Mingfei studied the boy closely. He had never seen a young boy as beautiful as him—his round face had a hint of both boyishness and girliness, every movement light and elegant, as if he had never stepped on dust. Leaning against the ivy-covered window frame, the boy gazed into the distance, his golden eyes tinged with a soft red in the setting sun, entirely unlike the cold harshness of Chu Zihang’s golden eyes.

The tranquility of the scene was almost too beautiful to disrupt, as the sunset bathed Cassell College in a painterly light.

“Hey, I’m Lu Mingfei,” Lu Mingfei thought it was best to introduce himself.

“My name is Lu Mingze,” the boy said softly, still looking off into the distance.

Lu Mingfei thought he was joking. Lu Mingze was someone he knew very well—his cousin, who shared a room with him and attended the same high school. When they were younger, Lu Mingze had been quite cute, but now, at 160 cm tall and weighing the same in pounds, he was going through puberty with a face full of acne. He couldn’t find a girlfriend at school, so he wrote a bunch of sad, hopeless lines online to attract girls. The boy before him was worlds apart from Lu Mingze—there wasn’t a shred of similarity.

“Twilight? You’re here?” the boy turned to look at Lu Mingfei.

Lu Mingfei was startled, nearly jumping in surprise. “Scars of the Twilight” was his QQ alias when he posed as a girl. He used this ID to mess with Lu Mingze, and every time Lu Mingze saw him online, he’d say, “Twilight? You’re here?”

It was such a simple greeting, but whenever Lu Mingze typed it on screen, Lu Mingfei would sense an eager anticipation behind it. Yet when this boy said it, it felt completely different, as if he always knew Lu Mingfei would come, at that exact moment.

“Who are you?” Lu Mingfei’s voice trembled slightly.

“It doesn’t matter. This is your ‘Vision’; everyone’s ‘Vision’ is different, but it always reveals what’s most important to them. And in your Vision, you saw me.” The boy, who called himself Lu Mingze, smiled. “I’m honored to be the one you care about the most.”

“Don’t joke around! Isn’t ‘Vision’ supposed to show… chaotic lines or something? Look at you… there’s nothing chaotic about you. Your hair is perfectly tidy!”

“This time, you summoned me. Why you see me is a question you have to answer for yourself. Everyone else feels sad. Don’t you?” Lu Mingze turned his head slightly to glance at the people in the classroom, some crying, some laughing. The two of them sat on the windowsill, like spectators of a surreal play.

“I don’t feel anything. If ‘Vision’ was supposed to make me sad, why aren’t you sad at all?” Lu Mingfei asked.

“They are genuinely sad because they’re seeing what lies deepest in their hearts. What lies deepest in your heart?” Lu Mingze stretched out a finger and poked Lu Mingfei’s chest.

“Deeper than the heart… that’s probably the stomach,” Lu Mingfei couldn’t resist joking.

“Humans are foolish beings, and you are too. The difference is, you deliberately choose to make yourself foolish,” Lu Mingze said calmly. “You don’t feel sadness because I am sad for you. Isn’t that cruel?”

He smiled at Lu Mingfei—his smile radiating in the sunlight.

“Are we having a deep discussion about love between two men? ‘I’m sad for you’… don’t you think your lines sound like they’re pretty romantic?” Lu Mingfei felt goosebumps all over. He was about ten years older than the boy, but he didn’t feel the advantage of age and experience at all. The other party’s light words kept pressing on her, making Lu Mingfei gradually lose the ability to resist, like a person locked in a pool of water watching someone slowly come up to drown his mouth.

Boy ignored him, silently watching the sunset, lost in thought. The sun was sinking, and in the fading light, two streams of tears silently rolled down the boy’s cheeks.

Lu Mingfei felt his heart clench as if grabbed by a powerful hand. In that moment, he could feel an overwhelming sadness emanating from the boy—a cold torrent rushing over him, threatening to engulf him. It wasn’t some romantic sentiment or pretended sadness; it was raw, fierce, and domineering—worthy of reverence.

“Right now, I hate that you’re sitting next to me,” Lu Mingze said, suddenly kicking Lu Mingfei off balance.

Lu Mingfei lost his balance and fell off the windowsill. To his shock, he realized he wasn’t on the second floor of the library; he was on the rooftop of an obelisk. Below were no green lawns of Cassell College—only jagged stone formations, which would surely shatter him upon impact. He flailed, trying to grab something, but there was nothing—only air.

Above him, Lu Mingze stood up silently, standing atop the pointed tip of the obelisk, a massive sunset behind him. He waved goodbye to Lu Mingfei, his beautiful face devoid of any expression.

In an instant, it was as if lightning had struck Lu Mingfei’s brain, a scene flashing grotesquely—a stormy night, the cold stone edge of a flowerbed, raindrops falling from the leaves above. He and the boy, or maybe his cousin Lu Mingze, sitting together in the dark, embracing tightly.

“Oh god! I don’t like men!” Lu Mingfei fell into darkness.

He jolted awake, leaping up from his chair, covered in cold sweat, as if he had broken through a layer of darkness to return to reality. In front of him stood Nono, who was vigorously patting his head, leaving him feeling dizzy. The empty examination room had only the two of them left.

“Impressive! You managed to sleep soundly during the 3E exam,” Nono said. “Everyone else is concentrating so much that they can’t wait to prick up their ears. Are you so arrogant because you’re an ‘S’ rank?”

“Sleep… Is the exam over?” Lu Mingfei rubbed his eyes.

“It’s almost lunchtime. The 3E exam has a fixed time of only three hours.”

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