[Hallway—A Moment After]
The fluorescent lights buzzed quietly above them.
The hallway was empty. Silent. Cold. And the boy in front of him—tall, sharp-featured, with eyes like frost—was staring at Qiao Ning as if she had crawled back from the grave he personally dug.
Lu Zhen's heartbeat did not quicken.
No.
He had been stared down by mob bosses, police commanders, assassins, and drunk loan sharks with broken morals.
But this boy… This boy made something in his body flinch.
Not because he was scared.
But because this body…Qiao Ning's body…remembered him.
And it trembled.
The boy's voice was low and quiet and held an edge sharp enough to cut steel.
"I thought…" He took a single step closer. "Ning Ning… I thought you finally died."
Lu Zhen's eyes narrowed slightly—dangerously. "…What?"
But the boy didn't look fazed by the coldness in her voice. His gaze remained steady—too calm, too deep, too unreadable.
He didn't look like a bully. He looked like someone who could be one. Or someone who didn't care if he was mistaken as one.
The kind of boy whose silence alone made people nervous. He didn't answer her question. Instead, he tilted his head slightly, his gaze running—slowly—from the top of Qiao Ning's hair to the tips of her shoes. Not lecherous. Not mocking. Just… assessing.
Dead calm.
"Didn't I tell you to transfer schools?" His voice was low, but it carried weight—dark and flat, like a warning. "Why are you here again? You… shouldn't have come back."
Lu Zhen's fingers curled.
His jaw tightened. His entire aura sharpened like a blade being unsheathed.
Oh… so this bastard is involved.
"So you're telling me…" Lu Zhen muttered, his voice dropping, "YOU were the one who pushed her this far?"
Shen Yacheng's brows knitted. "What?"
Lu Zhen didn't wait.
He stepped in close—too close—grabbed Shen Yacheng by the collar, and yanked him forward. The students at the far end of the hallway froze.
Shen Yacheng widened his eyes—not in fear, but in pure stunned confusion. "What are you—"
BAM!!!!!
Lu Zhen slammed him against the wall, one hand gripping his collar, the other pressed against the wall beside his head.
The entire hallway shook.
Shen Yacheng stared—genuinely shell-shocked. This wasn't the Qiao Ning he knew. This wasn't even a Qiao Ning he could process.
Lu Zhen didn't care.
He pressed his arm across Shen Yacheng's chest, pinning him harder.
"Congratulations, kid…" Lu Zhen hissed, breath cold against his cheek. "Because I am very, very alive."
His smile sharpened—feral. Deadly.
"And this time—every single one of you who pushed her to that edge… every bastard who tried to break her…" He leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a blade to the throat.
"You will answer to me."
He let go of the collar—only to grab it again briefly and jerk Shen Yacheng forward.
"And if I find out you were part of it…" His grin turned monstrous. "Get. Ready."
He shoved him away and turned, walking off with the swagger of a mob boss exiting a crime scene.
Shen Yacheng stood frozen, gripping his collar, breath uneven.
He stared at her retreating back—small, slender, but carrying a dangerous aura that did not belong to the girl he thought he knew.
"…She…" he whispered, stunned. His brows knit, eyes following her like he couldn't believe what he'd just witnessed.
"She… changed?"
He stood frozen there—tall, intimidating, yet shaken—watching her storm away like a small hurricane in a school uniform.
Lu Zhen—inside Qiao Ning's body—stomped down the hallway, every step radiating fury and purpose. The soft click-clack of her shoes clashed with the violent aura dripping from her shoulders. Anger simmered around her like heat haze.
But as she disappeared around a corner…
Someone else continued to watch.
A girl.
Hair in a tight, neat ponytail. Oversized glasses swallowing half her face. Uniform perfect, posture stiff and proper—too proper. She stood partially hidden at the end of the hallway like a shadow that learned how to breathe.
Her fingers nudged her glasses up slowly, deliberately.
Behind those thick lenses—her eyes sharpened.
"She really did change," the girl murmured, voice nearly emotionless… yet edged with something unsettling.
Not fear.
Not relief.
Something colder.
A tiny smile—too controlled to be friendly—ghosted at the corner of her lips.
"She's not the same Qiao Ning anymore…" She whispered, voice low and unreadable."…which means everything in this school is about to change too."
And behind those glasses—her eyes sharpened.
"Hmph."
She smirked faintly.
"This will be… interesting."
***
[Class 2-A—Study Hall—Later]
The room was dead silent. Pens scribbled. Pages flipped. Students breathed academically. And in the middle of this scholarly graveyard…sat Lu Zhen.
Staring at his English textbook like it was an eldritch monster summoned from a forbidden dimension.
He squinted.
He tilted his head.
Flipped the page.
Squinted harder.
Finally, he leaned back in his chair and whispered with the despair of a dying soul, "…I don't… get any of this."
He slapped the book onto his face dramatically.
"This… is torture. Actual torture. CIA-level interrogation. I would rather listen to that dean scream for two more hours—"
He peeled the book off his face and looked around, hoping—praying—that someone else was suffering too.
Nope.
Every single student looked like a model student from a scholarship brochure.
Focused. Serious. Studying like their lives depended on it.
He groaned. "…Yeah. I'm the only idiot here."
He dropped his forehead to the desk with a loud THUNK.
And then—right next to his ear—"Are you bored?"
The voice was so ghostly, so sudden, so close that—"WHHAAOOOO—!!"
He nearly levitated out of his chair. His soul jumped out, did two laps around the ceiling, and barely returned in time.
He turned so fast his neck cracked.
Behind him stood the girl from the hallway.
Tight ponytail. Giant glasses big enough to receive satellite signals. Expression flatter than a pancake run over by a truck.
She blinked once.
"Did I scare you?"
No emotion. Zero guilt. Pure chaos.
Lu Zhen clutched his chest dramatically. "SCARE ME—?! GIRL, I almost reincarnated AGAIN!"
She ignored his near-death experience entirely and calmly slid into the seat next to him like this was perfectly normal.
"I see… You haven't done anything." She tapped his blank notebook. "Just as I predicted..."
She leaned closer. Too close. Staring straight into his soul like she was running a background check.
"…You. Need. Help."
Beat.
"And I can help you."
Lu Zhen blinked. "Help? How?"
She tapped the English textbook with clinical precision. "I'll tutor you."
He narrowed his eyes. Suspicious. Gangster instinct tingling.
"Alright… What do you want in return? Nobody gives free service in this world—I taught that to people myself."
Her glasses glinted with a deadly seriousness.
"One word…" She pointed. "PROTECTION."
Lu Zhen stared. "...Huh?"
She didn't blink.
"Protect. Me." Then she slowly turned her head—the motion stiff and eerie like a haunted doll.
Lu Zhen followed her gaze… And there they were.
A group of five students—two girls and three boys—lounging like discount villains in the corner. Arms crossed. Leaning back. Wearing smug looks that screamed 'we own this school'.
Their eyes locked onto him. Cold. Mocking. Predators watching their next target.
The girl whispered, voice low like a conspiracy, "After you…they're coming after me next. So I need protection."
A chill slid down Lu Zhen's spine… Then—slowly—a dangerous grin curled on his soft lips.
"Oh really…?"
The bullies kept staring. But this time… They weren't looking at the old Qiao Ning. They were staring straight into the eyes of a wolf wearing a bunny sweater.
And that was the moment Lu Zhen thought, Finally… targets found.
Song Xiaoting poked him lightly. "So… will you do it?"
Lu Zhen—aka the newly upgraded Qiao Ning—didn't look away from the bullies. His eyes narrowed, voice dropping lower.
"…Why me? You know I was bullied too—"
"No," she cut him off firmly, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Not you. Not anymore."
He blinked.
She continued calmly, like she was stating the answer to a math question.
"I saw everything. When you confronted Shen Yacheng." Her tone stayed as flat as a flatline. "You cracked. The wall. With your bare hands."
Lu Zhen stilled.
"Oh… so you saw that."
She nodded. "Yes. And I would prefer to stay alive. So—" She extended her hand across the desk with the seriousness of signing a blood pact.
"Let's be friends."
Lu Zhen stared at her hand.
Then at her.
Then at the five bullies smirking in their corner.
Then he slowly extended his own hand—small, soft, girly—but filled with the soul of a man who once made loan sharks cry.
"Alright, kid. I'll protect you."
Song Xiaoting squinted. "Kid? Do you not remember my name? It's Song Xiaoting."
"Right, right… Xiaoting," he nodded, patting her head like she was a junior member of his gang. "You help me study, and I'll help you not die."
She cracked the faintest smile behind her giant glasses. "Deal."
And just like that—An ex-gangster trapped in a girl's body gained his first loyal sidekick.
A genius girl with zero social survival skills. A wolf in bunny clothing with a grudge list longer than the school roster.