Raising a Wife in a Supernatural World [Infinite] – CH2

Chapter 2: Spook High (2)

Before the bell finished ringing, a massive figure materialized at the classroom door. Bloated, corpulent, towering… He took up nearly the entire entryway. He had to wedge and squeeze roll after roll of sagging flab through the frame before he could finally force his way inside.

The players, who had still been frantically scouring the room for clues, scrambled back to their seats in sheer terror. They sat rod-straight, awaiting the start of this next period.

During the scramble, some of them noticed that the other students had placed test papers on their desks. The realization struck them like a bucket of freezing water, and in a sheer panic, they grabbed their pens to scribble down answers at random.

Others hadn’t noticed at all, until the girl named Nan Zhu deliberately held up her paper to tip them off.

At the same time, the obese teacher finally dragged his doughy bulk into the room. After lumbering his way to the podium, he cleared his throat and instructed the students to pass forward their completed test papers so he could grade them.

“Teacher Zhang has a nasty temper. I’ll hand it in for you this time.” Before Qin Fu’an could get up, his deskmate reached over and took the paper from his desk. When Qin Fu’an looked at him, the boy gave him another grateful smile.

Watching his retreating figure weave through the classroom toward the podium, Qin Fu’an shifted his focus to the other players, who were still hunched over their desks and writing furiously.

The test was short, but for those who hadn’t paid attention to the blackboard earlier, scribbling down answers in time was an impossible task.

Once all the papers were turned in, the room fell dead silent once more.

The only remaining sound was the frantic scratching of pen tips digging into paper.

From the podium, the teacher narrowed his eyes—squeezed into thin slits by folds of bloated fat—and cast a piercing, predatory glare toward the offenders.

He spoke with an authoritative rumble that stood in stark contrast to his grotesque frame:

“Those who haven’t turned in their papers—stand up.”

Time seemed to freeze solid.

The scratching stopped dead. Then, in an eerie echo of an everyday classroom, every student hunched over their work turned their heads in unison toward the players who remained seated.

Their movement was unnervingly synchronized, accompanied by the stiff, distinct crack of grinding neck bones. Hollow, dead eyes locked onto the few players as if ready to devour them whole, instantly casting a skin-crawling pall over the room.

“Still not standing? Are you waiting for me to call roll?” The teacher’s pitch hitched upward, laced with an undeniable urge and hunger.

Just as his mouth opened to bark out a name, Nan Zhu took the lead and stood up.

As the de facto leader among the group, her initiative prompted the others to follow. After a beat of hesitation, they pushed out of their chairs with bloodless faces.

Nan Zhu held her nerve. Looking up at the teacher, whose expression had soured visibly, she knew she had just dodged a bullet. Feeling a thread of relief, she offered a remarkably contrite apology: “I’m so sorry, Teacher. My stomach hurt terribly during the last period, and going to the restroom delayed my test. I promise it won’t happen again. Please forgive me.”

Behind her, Qin Fu’an took advantage of the blind spot created by her standing figure to jot down a line on a scrap of paper, sliding it stealthily toward his deskmate.

Evidently stunned that anyone would have the audacity to pass notes right under Teacher Zhang’s furious gaze, the boy whipped his head around. His hollow pupils dilated with clear shock—a reaction that suddenly made him look far more alive than the surrounding students.

Meeting his deskmate’s startled, wary stare, Qin Fu’an acted as if he noticed nothing amiss. Far from pulling the paper back, he pushed it forward another fraction under the boy’s watch.

The scrap of paper came to rest right against the prominent bone of the boy’s slender wrist.

The boy sat frozen for a moment. Like an aggrieved pushover bullied by the class delinquent, he quietly pressed his wrist down over the note. Swallowing his dread of the teacher, he peeked down at the writing.

A second later, his eyes shut tight, as if confronted by words so baffling they defied all reason.

[What’s your name?]

The handwriting was gorgeous—bold and sweeping, each stroke carrying an effortless, razor-sharp elegance.

Yet it was utterly detestable.

The boy: “…”

For a split second, he fantasized about how satisfying it would feel to slap that paper straight onto Qin Fu’an’s handsome face.

Meanwhile, on the livestream screen that Qin Fu’an couldn’t see, the viewers burst into unfettered laughter at his stunt.

[I imagined a hundred different questions a rookie would ask, but never this one.]

[Rookies in my mind: cautious, careful, hunting every clue and scrap of lore. Rookie in reality: Hey there, what’s your name?]

[What the hell! Never thought I’d see such an aggressive, stiff pickup line in my life. If I were the NPC, I’d want to saw his skull open and examine his brain.]

[With that personality, he’s never getting a wife in this lifetime. What a cause for celebration!]

As a rookie who had just set foot in his very first instance, Qin Fu’an naturally couldn’t see any of the bullet chat. While listening to the other players parrot Nan Zhu’s apologies to appease the teacher, he tilted his head, watching his deskmate with clear, pale-green eyes, silently waiting for an answer.

Deskmate: “…”

The boy drew a deep breath. Pinching a corner of the note, he slowly crushed it into a tight ball inside his fist. The deliberate force in his grip looked as though he wished he were wringing the neck of the person who wrote it just to vent his frustration.

Yet it was precisely this wave of petulance that made his expressions and eyes so vivid, rendering him no different from any sulking high schooler.

Though Qin Fu’an didn’t get his note back, his eyes drifted down to the boy’s open textbook, where a name was inked neatly across the title page:

Xie Yunhuai.

A pleasant name, written in a clear, graceful hand.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, Teacher Zhang called the standing players back to their seats with a darkened face.

Now that his cover was gone, Qin Fu’an behaved himself, holding back from slipping any more bizarre notes to his deskmate.

He also learned the price for failing to finish the test on time.

Once class let out, they would have to copy every question and correct answer ten times over.

It sounded like standard school punishment, but the sharper players were already sinking into despair.

This was only the second period of the morning.

This class would almost certainly come with its own homework. Stacking the two together, they could already foresee their own demise.

A slender pen spun fluidly twice through Qin Fu’an’s equally long fingers. Xie Yunhuai’s gaze was drawn over by the motion, and in the next second, he saw his deskmate set the pen down and start tearing another strip of paper.

The faint rustle of tearing paper broke out. Xie Yunhuai’s eyelids twitched. Exercising monumental restraint, he sat up straight and willed himself not to pay another shred of attention to this reckless weirdo.

If the guy wanted to throw his life away, he could go right ahead and die.

It wasn’t as though he could remember how many deskmates he had burned through anyway; the next one might actually be quiet and timid.

Lured in by the spectacle, roaming viewers paused their scrolling to linger in the rookie’s stream, eager to see what creative way he would find to get himself killed.

Passing notes during class in Spook High? Hah. The last player who tried that… wait, had anyone ever dared?

Despite resolving to ignore his eccentric deskmate, Xie Yunhuai couldn’t resist a sideways glance when Qin Fu’an put pen to paper again.

And immediately fumed all over again.

The bastard was deliberately shielding the paper with his hand, as if terrified Xie Yunhuai might sneak a peek!

Xie Yunhuai hadn’t felt this irritated in ages. He ground his teeth in silence, gripping his pen so hard that the pale pads of his fingers turned white, leaving faint red indentations.

Qin Fu’an didn’t notice his deskmate’s little fit. As for shielding the paper… who didn’t take precautions when slacking off in class?

Hunched slightly, he scrawled a line, folded the paper into a tight little square, and waited. The moment Teacher Zhang sluggishly turned around to write on the board, Qin Fu’an flicked his right wrist. The white paper wad arched gracefully through the air, landing dead-center on Nan Zhu’s desk.

The whole move was executed with casual, effortless finesse. Paired with the slight lift of Qin Fu’an’s satisfied brow, even the livestream viewers had to admit it looked ridiculously cool.

[The stream needs an audio update. If I could send voice notes, I’d drop a loud wolf whistle right now. That throw was clean!]

[No wonder the boys in school loved fooling around behind the teacher’s back—turns out they were just trying to look hot. Too bad none of them had this streamer’s face; back then I just thought they were practicing circus tricks…]

[LMAO, are you guys only watching him act cool? Look to the side! The NPC deskmate is gripping his pen so hard it’s about to snap in half!]

[Hahaha, this rookie has great streaming value. His face is just as pretty as his eyes. Too bad he loves courting death and won’t group up with the others. He probably won’t survive this instance, so I won’t waste a follow.]

[True. The only shame is those eyes—such a gorgeous, crystalline green. I’d love to scoop them out, polish them into gems, and present them to our noble King.]

[Ghost spotted above. Verified and reported.]

[…]

The sudden landing of the paper wad made Nan Zhu’s heart lurch. Her instincts screamed at her to turn around, but the monstrosity on the podium was already swiveling back toward the class.

Taking three seconds to steady her ragged breath, she used her textbook as cover to gingerly unfold the projectile from the sky.

She cast a swift glance at the handwriting.

Her eyes went wide.

The words scribbled on the paper provided the exact breakthrough she and the other players desperately needed.

They had no idea what the correct answers were from the previous period. Copying the test and the answers ten times over meant wheedling the solutions out of an NPC first—a gamble with fatal risks.

Add in the homework from this period, and survival became flat-out impossible.

Everything inside Spook High appeared terrifyingly normal on the surface. Yet it was precisely this mundane teacher-student dynamic that suffocated the players the most. Without a viable way out, the coming period would be their execution.

Yet the scrap of paper that had fallen into her lap pointed out a clear path forward.

[Interrupt this class.]

Just four words, yet they cut through the fog in Nan Zhu’s mind like a sudden ray of light.

Click here to download the full novel (PDF & EPUB)