Daily Disposable Persona - CH 100

Zong Yan held the homework sheets in his hands, his fingers trembling.

He hadn’t tried to stay awake last night because he knew he had self-study in the morning. If he hurried, he could still finish the rest of his homework before it was due.

What he wasn’t expecting was that when he got to the classroom and looked at his homework, it was already covered with words.

And when Zong Yan took a closer look, the handwriting was identical to his own, one and the same, but Zang Yan had a clear memory of how much he hadn’t written before he fell asleep.

Especially for the eight hundred-character essay. Zong Yan only started on it yesterday, and barely wrote two or three hundred characters. The remaining half of the paper wasn’t filled in. How could he possibly wake up today and find the rest of it already completed?

Was it possible to imagine things in your sleep?

As Zong Yan rubbed his temples an absurd idea occurred to him.

He wasn’t the only one in the house. There was also a god.

Which led to the question, would an evil god help him with his homework?

But it was easier for Zong Yan to believe he’d forgotten how much he wrote. He couldn’t imagine the great Lord of Time and Space would help him with his homework.

…It’s such a fantastic image I don’t even dare to think about it.

But the truth soon came to light.

In his afternoon Chinese class, the teacher was so amazed at Zong Yan’s essay that she read it to the class.

“The starry sky is vast and profound, and a multitude of races and far more superior species exist throughout the universe. Therefore human beings should not be arrogant and proud, but examine themselves with full awareness of their utter insignificance….”

The Chinese teacher spoke eloquently, reading from the essay in her hand. The classroom was silent. The students turned to stare at Zong Yan sitting in the back of the room with admiring expressions.

Their Chinese teacher was a bit of a maverick. High school essays generally followed a formula: state a thesis, add supporting arguments, then conclude with a summary. After a while, most students wrote essays according to a template, relying on a standard set of arguments and ideas to score points.

Although the Chinese teacher taught the class how to write good high school essays according to the accepted formula, she privately detested this model and encouraged them to state their own opinions in their homework assignments.

“This essay, if it were written for the college entrance exam, might not even score thirty points. But in my mind, it will always be a perfect essay.”

The teacher concluded with such a high evaluation, and the classroom was suddenly filled with half-suppressed laughter.

Zong Yan: “…”

He was now completely certain that such a sweeping and painful literary critique of the entire human race could never have been written by a science track student like himself.

If he hadn’t written it, the only possible culprit was Yog-Sothoth.

Who would ever imagine something like that?!

Zong Yan took his workbook back with complicated feelings. As he looked at the handwriting that matched his own, his mood was extraordinarily difficult to put into words.

Lately the Lord of Time and Space was being a little too nice to him.

Not only did he not actively persecute Zong Yan, the evil god even helped him do his homework. Two days ago Zong Yan woke up late. Yog patiently suspended time to let Zong Yan sleep in. What was even more frightening was that a few days ago Zong Yan forgot to buy groceries. When he opened the refrigerator in the evening, he found it empty. Just when Zong Yan was feeling frustrated and decided to order some takeout, the gray-haired evil god glanced at the empty shelves and snapped his fingers. A moment later, the refrigerator was filled with unknown alien food ingredients.

‘Maybe he still thinks of me as the Father God?’

Zong Yan couldn’t help but remember Nyarlathotep’s attitude. In the end, he couldn’t think of another explanation.

After all, if it weren’t for Azathoth, Zong Yan couldn’t imagine why an evil god would consider him worth thinking about.

Since he couldn’t figure it out, he put it aside. Zong Yan opened his collection of incorrect chemistry problems, abandoned all the other nonsense, and once again dove into the ocean of learning.

“Zong Yan, someone’s asking for you.”

Just when he managed to clear his mind, a classmate came over to his desk, hesitated, and whispered at him.

“Okay.” Zong Yan stopped writing. He casually slid a bookmark into his book and set it aside.

By the time he reached the hallway, Zong Yan realized something was wrong.

The corridor was densely packed with people who were whispering to each other, and they were saying things that didn’t make much sense to him.

“That’s what they said on the forum, and the flower of the sophomore class is really here ah…”

“Right, right, that’s it. She just asked a classmate to go in and get Senior Zong.”

“Oh wow, then it wasn’t just a crazy rumor on the forum? Here it comes! The star of the show is here!”

The moment Zong Yan walked out from the classroom, the people in the corridor fell silent. The students who were gabbing suddenly closed their mouths.

Maybe it was a side effect from wearing the shell of an evil god for so long. Zong Yan might have returned to his human body after being the half-self of Cthulhu, but his aura had undergone a radical change.

The black-haired teen stood in the doorway with an indifferent expression. A few overgrown strands of dark hair fell on both of his cheeks. His eyes were cold and aloof, and under the incandescent lights his pale skin seemed to fuse with his white shirt.

Clearly he was wearing the standard school uniform of Qingyang High School, just like everyone else. Some students privately had their school uniforms altered to make them look better, but Zong Yan’s uniform was the conventional version. Still, when he stood in the hallway, it somehow felt like he was the only one under a spotlight.

Frowning, Zong Yan swept a glance outside.

People were lined up on both sides of the corridor, but they were all leaning against the handrails or the wall. No one seemed to have any intention of coming over.

Only one person was standing in the middle.

It was a girl wearing a Qingyang High School uniform skirt. On her feet were a pair of small high-heeled black shoes. Her hair swept down her back, her lips were a little red, and there were dark smudges on her eyelids with a slight shimmer beneath her eyes.

If Zong Yan had been slightly less of an ignorant straight male, he would have noticed more.

For example, the length of this girl’s skirt was much shorter than the other girls. Most girls wore skirts just above the knee, but hers ended at mid-thigh. At a glance, her school uniform had been altered. For another thing, Qingyang High School required girls to wear black leather shoes without heels, but she was clearly clomping around in a pair of thick-heeled shoes that qualified as high heels. Also, her lips weren’t red, the smudges on her eyelids weren’t from lack of sleep, and the sparkle under her eyes wasn’t a trick of the light. That was lipstick, eye shadow, and highlighter.

But he was a straight man, and straight men would only see one thing, which was—

The school didn’t allow girls to wear their hair loose. But not only didn’t she have her hair tied back, she’d also seemingly dyed it brown and permed it with a wave.

Zong Yan waited patiently for a while, but no one spoke. The girl just kept staring at him mysteriously, so he said, “Is there something wrong? If there’s nothing, I’ll go back and work on my paper.”

Hiss! What a cold and ruthless man!

The male onlookers trembled inside.

The girl standing in the hallway was the sophomore-class school flower of Qingyang Senior High. On the forum, people often compared her with Xia KeYan, secretly poking each other to compete over her.

This girl had a powerful background. Everything she wore bent school regulations, but one of the school managers was related to her father, so she usually did as she pleased. Her temperament was incredibly bold. She always spoke her mind.

Although she had a domineering personality, she was extremely good-looking. And she was clearly standing here for a reason. To not give this girl some face was just too inhumane.

Many of the male students were immediately filled with righteous indignation.

“I…”

This class flower had lost a bet with some people on the forum. She was here for a dare.

According to the dare, she had to send a love letter, but this class flower wasn’t afraid. She’d begun going to nightclubs with her friends in the third year of junior high. Her favorite activity was club dancing. When it came to puppy love and defeating rivals, she was an expert.

But for some reason, as she stood there opposite the black-haired boy, meeting his cold gaze, she flushed with nervousness and instinctively twisted the item she was holding.

“?” Zong Yan responded to her with a puzzled look.

Only then did she seem to wake up. “Clomp, clomp, clomp”, stomping on her high heels, she shoved the item in her hand directly at the black-haired teenager.

“Here… Here you go!”

She stammered and immediately turned around and left. From behind, she almost seemed to be desperately fleeing.

The crowd of onlookers: ? ? ?

Fck, was that the same sophomore flower who was normally so fierce and in everybody’s face?!

Zong Yan quizzically looked down for a moment, then glanced at the end of the hallway where the girl had already disappeared. Finally he returned to class.

Although quite a few girls had a crush on him over the years, he wasn’t sure why, but for some reason they almost never confessed.

Maybe it was because they thought Zong Yan had an innate sense of alienation from others, which made him difficult to approach. In addition, Zong Yan’s movements were generally elusive. He disappeared after school, which meant no one could find him. In short, Zong Yan had rarely experienced this kind of thing. He was like a flower high up in the mountains, distant and unreachable.

Also, the love letter he was now holding didn’t look like a love letter at all. It was in a plain white envelope. So Zong Yan didn’t think about it much. He casually put it aside and picked up his pen to continue working on chemistry problems.

After this incident, several students in the class looked at him and gossiped.

They’d all witnessed the scene just now. The class flower didn’t give her target an opportunity to refuse or accept. In full view of everyone, she shoved the love letter directly at him. This inspired all sorts of gossip from the crowd.

What happened next was up to Zong Yan and his reaction.

In the end, they were all disappointed. Zong Yan really seemed to push the incident out of his mind. The poor simple love letter ended up in a random corner of his desk between the homework sheets and books. No trace of it was visible.

Zong Yan literally forgot all about it.

However, the envelope got wedged inside one of his books. After evening self-study, he wasn’t paying attention when he packed his school bag, so it went home with the rest of his things.

Today he didn’t have much homework. For once Zong Yan managed to finish everything during evening self-study. He stayed late, and when he finally got home, he tossed his school bag away without even opening it, and went straight into the bathroom.

The sound of pattering water came from the shower.

The gray-haired evil god stepped slowly out of the darkness. His golden eyes casually swept across the dimly-lit living room, and suddenly stopped on Zong Yan’s schoolbag.

The next second, a white envelope silently appeared in his hand.

He glanced carelessly at it, and a cluster of flame sprang up from his fingertips, burning it into nothingness.

A rare hint of displeasure flashed through Yog-Sothoth’s mind.

The tiniest of ants had actually tried to get its hands on the Lord of the Gate’s property?

You must be dreaming.

—

The author has something to say:

A hundred chapters!! Love you!!!

TL Notes:

maverick Chinese teacher – No gender was specified, I picked one

school essay stuff – I tried to make sense of this, I’m not familiar with how Chinese high school essays work and some of the wording was confusing

(abandoned) all the other nonsense – 胡思乱想 – make blind and disorderly conjectures; be lost in various fancies and conjectures; be moved by confused, foolish reflections; entertain all sorts of ideas

school flower – 校花 – a school beauty (female), school beauty queen, campus belle. The male equivalent is “school grass”.

star of the show – 主到 – main man, master

school flower undereye stuff – Currently it’s considered beautiful to have “lying silkworms” (卧蚕) under your eyes. Of course, these aren’t dark circles or eye bags that people tend to get when they’re old. Lying silkworms are a small band of tissue near the eyelash line on the lower eyelid. It’s especially visible when you smile, and it’s said to make people look friendly, beautiful, and young. One makeup technique is to add highlighting eyeshadow or glitter to this part of the eyelid to attract attention to it

did as she pleased – 横着走 – walked sideways – To walk sideways like a crab means to be rampant and domineering or unreasonable

bold personality – 泼辣 – rude and unreasonable; shrewish; vixenish; fierce and unreasonable

always spoke her mind – 说一不二 – mean what one says; He is a man of his word; He is as good as his word; never make a promise one cannot keep

[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]