"That's your brother?"
In the canteen, Zhou Yihu, one of the two guys from earlier, the one who had almost attacked Bai Luoyin pointed at Bai Luoyin's lunch table from theirs.
"He's the son of my father's wife," Gu Hai replied. The word brother irritated him.
"Ah!" Li Shou, the guy who had bullied Yang Meng chuckled, "The kid he's hanging out with, the girly one, he's a scholarship kid."
While in the real world, scholarships were a good thing, the students of An Kuanglan Memorial High School treated it with disdain.
An abstract social chain existed in the school, and the scholarship kids were at the bottom of that chain.
The rich kids stereotypically assumed scholarships are for people who do not have the funds to spare for real education. The students of An Kuanglan Memorial High School have adopted this stereotype as the norm despite its logically fallacious ambiguity.
Being the son of a commander, Gu Hai happened to be sitting at the top of the social chain. Coupled with his temper, strength and good looks, he was practically invincible.
Students from An Kuanglan subconsciously stuck to hanging with people from their social chain. Most times, you could go a step or two down from your chain to pick friends, and it won't matter much. Going any further down from that was equal to committing social suicide. Unless you were backed up by socially firm friends, you'd be treated like you were a part of the lowest social chain.
"He's trying to commit social suicide," Li Shou continued, "Aren't you worried he'll bring you down with him once people find out your relationship?"
Irritated, Gu Hai banged his fist on the table angrily, attracting stares from everyone in the canteen, including Bai Luoyin who hadn't noticed him before that moment.
"No one will find out, okay?" he stared at Li Shou intensely, causing the latter to cower in fear.
In retrospect, Gu Hai didn't care much for the social chain. He, however, cared very much about his and Bai Luoyin's relationship. To him, it was a nightmare that he wished he could wake up from soon.
Zhou Yihu, regretting he had started the conversation, waved his hand dismissively in an attempt to calm Gu Hai down, "It's okay, it's okay. Let's eat."
Bai Luoyin looked at the three of them.
Those two ruffians from earlier indeed are close friends with Gu Hai.
He snickered.
No surprise there, all three of them acted like ruffians anyways.
***
When they returned to class, before the teacher came in, Gu Hai tapped Bai Luoyin on the shoulder. It was time to start putting his plan to action. Now that he had an angle from which to anger Bai Luoyin, he grabbed it.
Bai Luoyin turned around slowly, wondering what Bai Luoyin wanted.
Gu Hai leaned in and with a stoic cryptic expression on his face asked, "Why are you hanging out with a scholarship kid?"
"What do you care?" Bai Luoyin replied with a question of his own, his expression even more cryptic than Gu Hai's.
"It's only your first day here, and you're already trying to commit social suicide. If people knew our relationship, you'd be bringing me down with you."
"Don't worry, no one will find out," Bai Luoyin said in a voice that was too calm and collected for Gu Hai. It pissed him off.
"I'm not particularly proud of being your stepbrother," Bai Luoyin added, sincerity dripping from his tone.
Shocked by this reply, Gu Hai struggled to remain calm and acted aloof. Was there anything shameful about him? If anything, he should be the one ashamed of being Bai Luoyin's stepbrother. At a loss for words, he quickly improvised, "I'm not proud of being your stepbrother either."
"Good," Bai Luoyin said, "I guess we've reached an understanding."
Before turning back around, he leaned in and looked Gu Hai in the eyes and whispered, "No one has to know about us."
Gu Hai leaned back against his seat. Something about Bai Luoyin made him restless. From the first time he had laid eyes on him till this moment, Bai Luoyin had treated him like he was nobody. Who had dared disregard him in this way before now?
Watching his back, he made a vow to make Bai Luoyin's life miserable.