Chapter 69: 70

Kou Chen thought Huo Ran was trying it on, but then he took a couple photos and just started scrolling through his phone.

“Hey, take it off,” Kou Chen said, “It’s not your birthday yet.” 

“It’s fine.” Huo Ran said.

“I know, no pouch or new charm, okay?” Kou Chen said. “I’ll give it back on your birthday…”

“I meant you don’t need to wait until my birthday.” Huo Ran said. “I’ll start wearing it now.”

“It’s a fucking birthday gift,” Kou Chen was baffled. “Isn’t it still half a month away? What am I supposed to give you then?” 

“You don’t need to get anything else,” Huo Ran said, and then he thought about it. Looking at him, he said: “Is it because you think there’s no sense of ceremony?”

Kou Chen glared at him, and a long moment later, he said: “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.” Huo Ran smiled.

“My mom says only little kids are that impatient. You give them new clothes or toys or something and they’re ripping into it on the spot.” Kou Chen said.

“I just want to play basketball with it on.” Huo Ran said. “It’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah.” Kou Chen agreed, and looked down. Huo Ran wore it on his right ankle, and he wore it on his left, so they could put it side by side. He took a couple of photos of both their legs, “Cool.”

After that, he grabbed Huo Ran’s arm. They were both still wearing their THXD bracelets, so he took a couple photos of those too. “Actually, I really can’t do leatherworking. It would look a lot better if Old Yang made it.”

Huo Ran smiled: “And you wouldn’t have cut or hammered your finger either.” 

“But it’s just not the same.” Kou Chen said. “He already made the little twistie last time, you can take it as a nice surprise. So it’s not like I can have him make your birthday gift too.”

“It looks pretty good actually, really. It’s very special, I never thought you could make a tape measure looking anklet, and the letters on it too.” Huo Ran said, and then he asked, “Little twistie?”

“The little snake from New Year’s.” Kou Chen rubbed his nose. “I’m scared of snakes, right? So everyone called them twisties instead of snakes so it wouldn’t scare me.”

“Then you’re Twistie Kou?” Huo Ran said. 

“You’re Twistie Huo.” Kou Chen pointed at the others. “Everyone! I’m Twistie Xu, I’m Twistie Xu, I’m Twistie Jiang, Twistie Wei, Twistie Hu… Happy New Years!”

Huo Ran laughed and clapped for him.

They all spent the entire weekend in the gymnasium. The girls practiced basketball too, but you could pretty much gloss over them, they really weren’t very good. 

“So we were thinking, us girls are really just there to fill up the spots, and after we get disqualified we can focus on cheering for you guys. Good plan, right?” Tang Wei said. “We can’t play basketball, but we’re still confident in our cheering abilities.”

“Humanities 3 isn’t even participating.” Wei Chaoren said.

“Not participating?” Huo Ran paused, looking at Luo Feiyu. He was on the sports committee, so he signed everyone up. “Humanities 3 isn’t participating? But they even have people on the basketball team.”

“Yeah, they did sign up last semester,” Luo Feiyu said. “But after they announced it for next week, Liang Mulan went and pulled them out of the tournament. They only found out after she did it.” 

“Fuck, what’s wrong with her?” Kou Chen said. “That’s way too disrespectful.”

“Maybe it’s because of the rooftop confession last time? Nobody in her class likes her.” Xu Zhifan said. “Made her look bad.”

“It’s possible.” Xu Chuan sighed. “They’re gonna hate her even more now. It’s not like we’re gonna be scared of the mean teachers like in elementary. There’s gonna be people who have opinions. Someone like Kou Chen would probably flip out on the spot.”

They all turned to look at Kou Chen. 

There wasn’t any particular expression on Kou Chen’s face, he looked calm like always, with a small smirk.

Because Humanities 3 pulled out, the rest of the classes drew lots to decide who got to automatically go to the next round.

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Huo Ran arrived last, and after he stepped into the room, a girl put the box down on the table, and asked: “We’re all good to start?”

Somebody stood up from the back window and walked over. It was Lin Wuyu. 

Lin Wuyu was in the student council, but Huo Ran didn’t know anything about them, so he wasn’t sure what he was responsible for.

“There are two balls of each colour inside.” Lin Wuyu shook the box. “Your opponent will be the person that draws the same colour as you.”

And then everyone lined up in order of grades and class.

Each ball that was drawn out was a different colour. Huo Ran picked a black one. He felt that it wasn’t a very nice colour. 

He stared at everyone’s hands, and when the last ball was drawn, he smacked his onto the table happily. “Is mine it?”

“Yup.” The student council members smiled and nodded, “Nice luck you’ve got there.”

“Let’s place our bets.” Lin Wuyu got out a notebook, and leaned over the table to write in it.

The student council members and the few teachers immediately went to write down their bets. The first years were shocked. 

Huo Ran was also shocked the first time he saw it, but their bets were all pretty strange. The loser has to buy all the participants food and drinks, and the larger your bet was the more you had to buy. Last year someone had to buy eight cases of sausages at once.

“I’ll bet on second year, Humanities 1.” Lin Wuyu said. “Barbeque and latiao.”

Then he turned to Huo Ran: “Make me proud.”

“We’re not competing in the first round.” Huo Ran reminded him. 

“I’ll bet on the later rounds.” Lin Wuyu said. “Play well, if you win I can treat your class to barbeque.”

“Okay.” Huo Ran smiled.

The tournament will be held from Friday to Sunday, and ever since the tournament brackets were posted on Wednesday, they’ve been surrounded. Any kind of group event at the school would get people excited, and Kou Chen thought it was mostly because of the atmosphere it created. 

His old school rarely held events like this, and even if it did, the crowd was listless and nobody wanted to participate, so it was boring. The only good thing about it was that there was always the possibility that a fight would break out because of a random word thrown around or an innocent glance, from both the guys and the girls.

Now at Fuzhong, Kou Chen really was excited. He liked it when everyone around him laughed and played together. Even if he had no friends, he would want to watch from the sidelines.

Besides, he did have friends now. He had The Seven of them, and he had Huo Ran.

“The first match is Sciences 1 vs. Humanities 4.” Huo Ran said. “We’ll be going against whoever wins.” 

“It’s Sciences 1 then. Humanities 4 doesn’t have much of a chance, they only have Pangpang, and there isn’t even anyone for him to work with.” Kou Chen said. “Sciences 1 has two guys on the school team, like us. But they’re not as good as us. You’re the captain after all, and who knows how many tricks you’ve got up your sleeve.”

“Some of them will never be seen by rookies.” Huo Ran said.

“I’m only tolerating you because of the tournament.” Kou Chen glared at him. “Enough already!”

“You started it.” Huo Ran glanced at him. 

“We can win against Sciences 1, right?” Kou Chen asked.

“As long as we don’t commit too many foul. We don’t have substitute players.” Huo Ran said.

“We can let the others know to stay calm…”

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“It’s fine.” Huo Ran said. “They can play however they want, if they commit a foul, they commit a foul.” 

“Fuck, what if the substitutes are bad?” Kou Chen said.

“Then we’ll play with four people, or three.” Huo Ran glanced at him. “What should we be scared of?”

“You’re wild, Captain.” Kou Chen said.

“What better time to be wild?” Huo Ran said. “That’s what tournaments are for.” 

The tournament schedule was tight, all four of the outdoor courts were gonna be used at the same time. The boys’ matches were first, and the final brackets would be set in two days.

So, even though Humanities 1 got a free pass through the first round and they only had to play in the afternoon, there was still a lot of pressure. But that’s what’s exciting about elimination tournaments. There was no opportunity to adjust your strategy, you lose one game and you’re out.

Their jerseys were made with the money from the class funds. The girls in their class were very particular about things like this. 

The jerseys had their names printed on them, and they were all white with red edges, with their class emblem, two held hands, over the left breast. They also each chose a little design to have stamped on their shorts.

Luo Feiyu chose one of teeth, making it look like a dentures ad.

Jiang Lei had three stripes, saying that his biggest dream in elementary school was to become a Pioneer Battalion Leader, but it never happened.

Wei Chaoren picked tanghulu, and he even wanted to specify that they be walnut filled, but Wu Xiaochen denied it because she couldn’t find a good image. 

Huo Ran’s design was simple, it was a… dog head.

Kou Chen wanted a scythe, but Huo Ran was very much against it, so he went with a cartoon of Shuaishuai drawn by a street artist.

Everyone flocked to the basketball courts before the tournament, and those who didn’t get a spot right beside the court had to stand on the bleachers. A bunch of people also brought chairs to stand on, and some even got step ladders from god knows where. It could fit multiple people on both sides, and Huo Ran thought it was some opening performance by the school council at first. 

The principal’s speech was similar to the one he gave on Sports Day, being only a couple sentences. He announced the commencement of all four matches, followed by cheers and applause from everyone, as well as chants from the cheerleaders.

The Humanities class cheerleaders were the loudest as usual. They had more girls, meaning more creativity. A bunch of the girls even received love letters as well as appreciative looks.

Kou Chen, Huo Ran, and the others all went to watch Sciences 1 vs. Humanities 4. Their jerseys were all pretty extra, so they were currently mingling in the crowd with jackets on, preparing to take them off in sync when the match began.

“Let’s cheer for Humanities 4.” Jiang Lei said. “We’re all from the Humanities after all.” 

“Okay.” Kou Chen nodded. Then he went to whisper to Huo Ran, “I doubt we’d be able to get much here.”

“They’re gonna save their strength.” Huo Ran said. “But it doesn’t matter, we don’t have any targeted strategies, it doesn’t matter what strategies they use.”

“Confident, are you?” Kou Chen said.

“Mhm.” Huo Ran nodded, and then he turned to him, “I’m mostly just very confident in our coordination.” 

“Me too.” Kou Chen smiled.

The difference in skill between Humanities 4 and Sciences 1 was just a little too big, it was obvious from the get go. Apart from Xiaopang, nobody else could play.

Huo Ran watched Xiaopang run around and sighed. 

“Pangpang’s trying his best.” Kou Chen whistled and yelled, “Go Humanities 4!”

Their cheerleaders immediately followed up with their own thing.

“We’ll probably have the stamina advantage this afternoon.” Kou Chen said.

“Not by much. If you run five kilometres right now, won’t you be able to do it again later?” Huo Ran said. “They don’t need to try too hard against Humanities 4. The others can’t keep up with Xiaopang. 

“You think everyone in Sciences 1 is like me? Five kilometres now, five kilometres again later?”

“Two are on the basketball team, and one does track.” Huo Ran looked at him. “What do you think?”

“Nothing to be afraid of.” Kou Chen tsked. “As long as you don’t yell at me.”

“No promises.” Huo Ran said. “If you play bad, I’m gonna yell at you for sure. I don’t think when I yell at people, I just say whatever I want…” 

“Go!” Kou Chen yelled.

“Fuck.” Huo Ran startled and almost jumped into the court.

As expected, Humanities 4 lost, and Sciences 1 won easily. Neither side held a grudge, so they shook hands and patted each other on the back friendlily. 

In the first round, all the Humanities classes except for lucky 1 were completely annihilated.

At lunch, the Sciences students said that if lucky 1 didn’t win the draw, the afternoon matches would just be the Sciences classes’ place to play. 

When Huo Ran walked into the cafeteria, someone even said pretty impolitely: “They’ve just been relaxing the whole morning while we were playing, the luck…”

He looked around, but he didn’t know who said it. There was bound to be bitter people, especially from the losing classes.

“That’s just how the rules are. If it were your class, would you go run around the field for forty minutes?” Huo Ran retorted. “If you’re that scared about losing to us, you can come discuss it with me. I’ll take my team and run for forty minutes.”

After he said that, nobody stood up to the challenge. Someone walked up behind him and patted his shoulder: “Nice.” 

“Don’t try to suck up to me.” Huo Ran replied without thinking.

Everyone around them burst out into laughter, and when he turned around, he saw that it was Sciences 1’s captain. A member of the school team.

“Fuck,” Huo Ran gave him a high-five. “Don’t eat too much, it’ll affect your energy.”

“Got it.” The other laughed. 

Even though not everyone was as unhappy about it as that person from lunch earlier, the fact remained that Humanities 1 got to play one less game.

“Listen up.” Huo Ran looked at his starting players, and the substitutes that might be invisible. “There isn’t really a strategy, just play like you did at practice last weekend. Don’t be afraid of committing fouls, the rules are there to break. Why else would they give you five chances…”

“Really?” Jiang Lei looked at him. 

“Of course not!” Kou Chen glared at Jiang Lei. “But Huo Ran’s right.”

“Yes.” Everyone nodded.

“Remember, we’re not just trying to win.” Huo Ran said. “We want to win with as many points as possible. We have to show them that this tournament will never just be the Sciences classes’ place to play.”

“Yes!” Everyone yelled. 

As he headed towards the court, Huo Ran added: “As long as I’m here, first place will never belong to them.”

Behind him, Kou Chen stared at Huo Ran’s back as he followed.

Huo Ran looked really menacing after he said that. There was no trace of the Little Cutie at all now.

Even if Kou Chen thought about the silly little Shiba Inu head printed on his shorts, it wouldn’t affect Huo Ran’s current image in his eyes at all. He was really cool. 

He quickened his pace and walked beside Huo Ran.

The ten or so guys behind them swung their arms and stepped forward with the wind.

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