The Abused Villain is Always Obsessed with Me - Chapter 21

The tungsten light tubes overhead cast a bright, steady glow across the classroom. The room was eerily silent, save for the occasional scratching of pen tips against paper and the soft coughs or murmurs of students, which quickly faded back into stillness.

Zhuo Ying flipped from the practice problems to the answer key and back again, repeating the motion several times. The thin paper rustled loudly, drawing curious glances from nearby students. With a sigh, she tossed the red and black pens she had been clutching onto the desk.

Leaning forward with her elbows bent, she rested her head on the desk and turned to look at Lu Cang. He remained hunched over his paper, head down, focused intently on his calculations.

After staring at him for five minutes without him so much as glancing up, Zhuo Ying finally couldn’t resist. She reached out and poked Lu Cang’s arm.

His hand froze mid-motion. Lu Cang glanced at her briefly, but said nothing.

Zhuo Ying, long accustomed to his perpetually mute demeanor, pointed with a mournful expression at her physics workbook, which lay open on the desk.

“Lu Cang, how many multiple-choice questions did you get wrong in this unit?”

Hearing this, Lu Cang tucked his pen between his index and middle fingers, the black barrel making his sharply defined knuckles appear even paler. He flipped back a page and glanced at the paper.

“That’s right. What’s wrong?”

“Aaaah! I knew I shouldn’t have asked you!” Zhuo Ying hissed, her voice barely above a whisper, but the strained rasp betrayed her desperate frustration. “I got all the multiple-choice questions wrong! All of them!”

Lu Cang glanced at her, at a loss for words. After a pause, he murmured, “Well, that’s just bad luck.”

“Bad luck? I answered them all myself!”

Her voice suddenly rose, the volume betraying her composure. Students around them turned to stare. Zhuo Ying quickly covered her mouth, ducked her head, and pretended to be oblivious.

The physics teacher, seated at the podium, adjusted his glasses, which had slipped down his nose. Nearing retirement age and with his hearing slightly impaired from years of using a microphone, he scanned the classroom.

“Everyone finished? Class Monitor, please collect the assignments.”

Several slower students who hadn’t finished glared resentfully at Zhuo Ying, the culprit of their predicament. Zhuo Ying clasped her hands together, offered an apologetic smile, and mouthed “Sorry.”

The physics teacher disliked appointing class representatives, so Shen Wenyu usually collected the homework.

Tests were manageable, but these thick practice booklets were too much for one person to carry to the office. Noticing this, the physics teacher looked up.

“Lu Cang, help collect these.”

The reason was simple: Lu Cang consistently scored the highest in physics exams, so the teacher remembered his name.

Lu Cang silently stood up, grabbed his and Zhuo Ying’s homework, and walked to the front of the class.

Once all the homework was collected, Shen Wenyu nodded to the teacher. The two boys carried the thick stack of practice booklets out of the classroom and headed toward the physics office.

With nearly ten minutes left before the bell, the hallway was quiet and empty. The sound of their shoes scuffing against the floor and their breathing were clearly audible.

Lu Cang walked slightly ahead, half a step ahead of Shen Wenyu. Both boys carried the homework in silence, neither showing any inclination to speak.

Shen Wenyu stared at Lu Cang’s back: his slender, wiry frame, hair long enough to brush his neck, the cold, upward gaze he used when looking at people, and his habit of zipping his uniform jacket all the way up, buttoned tight.

He and Lu Cang were truly incompatible.

I wonder what Lu Cang is like at home.

Shen Wenyu recalled the recent parent-teacher conference when Feng Hechi had proactively added him on WeChat afterward.

When he checked his phone after school and saw the blurred verification request, a faint sense of joy had unexpectedly risen in his heart.

Perhaps boys at this age naturally yearn for men who appear mature and composed. After that, he found himself thinking about Feng Hechi from time to time and even considered adding him first, but ultimately decided against it, feeling it would seem too strange.

He never imagined Feng Hechi would actually take the initiative to add him.

After returning home, he casually mentioned school matters to his parents, mentioning Feng Hechi in passing. This city was small, with few schools, so parents tended to know each other to some extent.

To his surprise, his parents’ reaction wasn’t particularly positive.

“I’ve heard rumors about that man,” his mother said. “He’s the type who lives off his wife. He spends all day at home drinking, unshaven and disheveled. It’s a pity for his child, having such a father.”

Shen Wenyu listened silently, but inwardly he remained unconvinced.

Bearded, a shut-in, living off his wife—none of these descriptions matched the Feng Hechi he knew.

Just idle gossip among adults, he thought.

As his thoughts drifted, Lu Cang, who was walking ahead, suddenly stopped.

Without turning around, Lu Cang spoke in a strange, low voice, his breath sounding like a snake’s tongue—sticky, damp, and faintly radiating danger.

“We haven’t added each other as friends yet, have we?”

The abrupt change in topic mirrored Lu Cang’s sudden way of speaking.

“No, we haven’t. If you want to, I can add you after school,” Shen Wenyu replied, steadying himself. His tone was calm, tinged with a barely perceptible arrogance.

He paused, as if remembering something, and chuckled softly.

“So you do have a phone after all. I always saw you getting free rice at the cafeteria, I thought your family might be struggling.”

When school first started, Shen Wenyu had tried to get along with Lu Cang, hoping to build a good relationship.

But Lu Cang always met him with a cold face, and Shen Wenyu often felt a faint unease around him.

Over time, Shen Wenyu’s patience wore thin, and he stopped putting on a friendly face for Lu Cang.

Even though Shen Wenyu had a decent relationship with Feng Hechi, judging by how Lu Cang and Feng Hechi interacted, their relationship couldn’t be much better.

Maybe Feng Hechi doesn’t even like Lu Cang deep down, Shen Wenyu thought, his words becoming even more cutting.

Lu Cang remained silent, refusing to speak. Shen Wenyu raised an eyebrow and continued to smile.

“You’re already so thin. You really should eat more nutritious food. You can borrow my meal card.”

The seemingly considerate words hid a condescending malice, easily detected with a moment’s reflection.

Shen Wenyu was a master of such tactics.

Growing up, he had often faced harassment from those who disliked him, and he had honed this method of retaliation.

To outsiders, his words sounded sincere, as if he genuinely cared about the other person’s well-being.

Only the target could clearly sense the subtle malice hidden beneath his seemingly kind words.

Yet they couldn’t confront him directly, knowing Shen Wenyu would simply feign innocence, claiming he meant no harm.

“Or should I mention it to Brother Hechi? Maybe he should remind you to eat more regularly?” Shen Wenyu suddenly suggested, his smile unwavering, though his tone carried an edge.

He knew Feng Hechi and Lu Cang had a strained relationship. By bringing this up, he was deliberately mocking Lu Cang, implying that even an outsider like himself could get along with Lu Cang’s adoptive father, while Lu Cang couldn’t.

“Oh? How would you tell him?”

Unexpectedly, Lu Cang didn’t react with anger. Instead, he chuckled softly. His deep, gravelly voice echoed clearly in the quiet stairwell.

“By phone, of course. WeChat makes it so easy. Why would we need to meet in person?”

Shen Wenyu looked puzzled. Is Lu Cang even from this era? How could he ask such a question?

“So, you admit it then.”

Lu Cang’s laughter faded slowly, his voice dropping to a low murmur. The words, whispered in that deep, resonant tone, carried an unsettling chill.

“Admit what?”

Lu Cang’s voice was so low that Shen Wenyu barely caught the words. He frowned, his expression growing even more puzzled.

Lu Cang didn’t elaborate, merely glanced at the staircase ahead and said calmly, “Let’s go. Class is about to end.”

“It’ll be crowded soon, and we won’t be able to talk.”

Indeed, after class, students from all grades would swarm into the corridors, and the staircase would be packed with students going up and down.

Especially for someone like Shen Wenyu, who was carrying homework and moving awkwardly, getting stuck on the stairs would waste a significant amount of time.

Shen Wenyu casually hummed in agreement and started walking ahead. After all, he’d already said everything he wanted to say to Lu Cang.

Rather than linger here arguing with Lu Cang, he preferred to finish delivering the homework and return to class as quickly as possible.

Suddenly, his ankle twisted sharply, his center of gravity shifted abruptly, and he lost control, pitching forward.

In that instant, time seemed to stretch out. Gravity relentlessly pulled Shen Wenyu downward.

He struggled to regain his balance, managing only to twist sideways in mid-air.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lu Cang still standing in his original spot, showing no intention of moving forward.

Lu Cang’s eyes, piercing through the strands of hair falling across his forehead, locked onto Shen Wenyu. Those usually gloomy and dark eyes now burned with a strange light.

What…?

Before Shen Wenyu could decipher its meaning, his gaze slid downward along with his falling motion, eventually settling on the lower half of Lu Cang’s face.

Lu Cang, standing impassively at the top of the stairs, twitched the corner of his mouth slightly.

Then, slowly, slowly, a curve began to form.

A sinister, malevolent smile, radiating an malice far greater and more chilling than Shen Wenyu could have ever imagined.

A single glance was enough to send a chill through his entire being.

Shen Wenyu’s mind went blank, the only sound the howling wind rushing past his ears as he plummeted downward.

Before him stretched the steep, plunging staircase, descending into the depths below.