This Beta Is Excessively Lazy - Chapter 3

During the summer break, Jiang Chen had sported ear-length, ash-gray hair. But with the start of the new school year, bowed by his mother’s relentless pressure, he’d chopped it all off and dyed it back to a neat, natural black. Right now, he looked the absolute picture of a well-behaved student.

At this exact moment, his soft, fine hair was brushing against the side of Gu Xin’s neck, sending a faint, ticklish sensation through his skin.

A “rut” is the ultimate sign of an Alpha’s sexual maturity, usually hitting somewhere between the ages of twelve and sixteen. It marks the point when they gain the ability to temporary-mark an Omega. If an Omega’s heat is around the corner, an Alpha can help suppress their raging pheromones; in fact, a temporary mark from an Alpha can sometimes be far more effective than any oral suppressant.

Naturally, asking a stranger about an Alpha’s rut or an Omega’s heat is considered incredibly rude…it is, after all, a deeply private matter.

As a thorough, through-and-through Beta, Jiang Chen had never suffered from either of these biological disruptions. And of course, when it came to such intimate affairs, he would never dream of prying into another Alpha’s business. He only dared to ask because he and Gu Xin had known each other forever.

Gu Xin’s hand tightened slightly on his phone. Without looking up, he answered flatly, “Sometime during the first semester of eighth grade, I guess.”

Jiang Chen’s beautiful, amber eyes lit up with genuine curiosity; he was always down for some gossip about Gu Xin. “So, did you have an Omega you wanted to mark back then? Aren’t you Alphas supposed to get, you know, super desperate to do that kind of stuff with an Omega during your rut?” He even playfully held up his hands to frame a heart shape in front of Gu Xin.

“No.” Gu Xin reached back and gently swatted at the forehead leaning so close to his ear. The closer Jiang Chen got, the hotter Gu Xin felt…he could feel the boy’s breath brushing right against his neck.

Jiang Chen wasn’t buying it for a second. He batted Gu Xin’s hand away, leaning in even closer to flash a cheeky grin. “Oh, come on, who are you lying to? Your face is literally turning red.”

Gu Xin kept his eyes glued to his screen, tapping in information. “I’m just hot. Hurry up and fill out your info, we still have homework to do.”

Successfully distracted, Jiang Chen slumped right back onto the sofa. “You just have to ruin the mood, don’t you? Homework is so boring, and afternoon classes completely drained me. Just let me crash on the couch for a bit. Call me when it’s time to eat.”

Seeing that Jiang Chen looked ready to pass out on the spot, Gu Xin relented. “Fine.”

Jiang Chen forced his heavy eyelids open just long enough to shove his phone into Gu Xin’s hand. “Just fill out mine too while you’re at it. It’s nothing important anyway.”

Gu Xin gave a quiet, “Mm.”

Jiang Chen’s profile was laid bare on the digital spreadsheet. As a Beta, his secondary gender characteristics weren’t particularly pronounced. Betas did develop pheromones between twelve and sixteen, but the scent was incredibly faint and had virtually no biological effect on Alphas or Omegas.

As Jiang Chen shifted, the hem of his uniform top rode up, exposing a pale, slender strip of skin. Gu Xin glanced at it, then quietly got up, went to his bedroom, and came back with a blanket. He draped it carefully over Jiang Chen’s exposed midriff before sitting down on the carpeted floor to start his own homework.

Jiang Chen was eventually roused from his slumber by the rich, mouth-watering aroma of food.

Outside, the setting sun had painted half the sky in brilliant hues of crimson, casting a warm, cozy orange glow across Gu Xin’s living room. It was a picture-perfect evening view.

Gu Xin was already busy popping open the lids of the takeout containers. “You’re awake? I ordered delivery…got that fried chicken you love so much.”

Jiang Chen couldn’t care less about the beautiful scenery outside. Stretching lazily, he scrambled off the couch and plopped down right across from Gu Xin, instantly snatching up his chopsticks to dig in.

He took a bite and sighed in pure bliss. “Xin-bao, it is so good to have you back. My mom has completely banned junk food at our place. Her cooking is so bland it’s driving me crazy. She’s obsessed with this whole ‘holistic wellness’ trend lately, and she’s forcing the rest of us to suffer through it with her.” In front of Gu Xin, Jiang Chen never felt the need to filter his thoughts.

Gu Xin looked up, a wry glint in his eye. “And yet you’re still giving me the silent treatment.”

The grudge in question was a bit of a silly story, but to Jiang Chen, it was a matter of principle.

When Gu Xin had moved away from the neighborhood back in the sixth grade, he hadn’t come back to visit once. Now, not only was he back, but he was also attending the same high school. Jiang Chen should have been thrilled. However, before moving back, Gu Xin had concocted a bright idea: he wanted it to be a massive surprise.

On the very first day of school, Jiang Chen had scanned the military training crowd only to see Gu Xin standing there in the same uniform…and in his exact class. Finding out he’d been kept entirely in the dark made Jiang Chen so mad he’d wanted to punch him on the spot. But being his naturally lazy self, Jiang Chen hated exerting energy and sweating, so he restrained his fists and opted for a cold war instead.

To make matters worse, when he got home, he overheard the neighbors chatting about the Gu family’s return. It turned out his mom, his sister, and even his little brother had all known. He was literally the absolute last person to find out. That sealed the deal. What was supposed to be a standard three-day silent treatment was instantly extended to two full weeks.

Jiang Chen tossed a clean chicken wing bone onto the table, his mouth slick with oil. “How is this my fault?”

Gu Xin passed him a tissue. “I wanted to give you a surprise. Wasn’t it a surprise?”

Jiang Chen rolled his eyes, taking the tissue to give his mouth a careless wipe. “A surprise? Try a jump scare. Besides, what was wrong with Experimental No. 1 High School? Shouldn’t you have just advanced straight into their high school division?”

Gu Xin shrugged. “I had a stomach ache during the High School Entrance Exam and completely tanked it. That’s why I ended up here at No. 3 High School.”

Jiang Chen blinked, a little confused, but didn’t overthink it. “You never told me that either. How do you even manage to mess up your stomach right before a major exam anyway?”

Gu Xin didn’t seem to mind. “School is school, it’s the same anywhere. Plus, look at the bright side…now we get to walk to school together every day.”

Jiang Chen’s eyes lit up as a brilliant realization hit him. “True. Hey, in that case, why don’t you just do my homework for me later?”

Ah, the ultimate perk of going to school together: copying homework!

But Gu Xin shut him down instantly with zero emotion. “Write it yourself.”

“Then let me copy yours,” Jiang Chen pouted.

Gu Xin shook his head. “No way. If you don’t know how to do it, I’ll teach you.”

Jiang Chen wiped his mouth again, huffing, “Stingy.”

Gu Xin ignored the complaining and pulled out Jiang Chen’s math workbook. “Do these two pages.”

To make matters worse, the teachers had meticulously torn out all the answer keys from the back of the workbooks before handing them out.

Slumping over the desk, Jiang Chen let out a massive, dramatic yawn. Realizing escape was impossible, he reluctantly started to write, his body twisting like a lazy snake, once again exposing a sliver of his lean, pale waist.

Gu Xin’s eyes drifted toward it for a fraction of a second before he quickly looked away.

He was more than happy to tutor Jiang Chen, but he would absolutely never do his homework for him or let him copy it. History had proven that whenever he enabled Jiang Chen’s laziness, disaster followed.

The first disaster happened back in first grade. Jiang Chen had whined about not wanting to write, so Gu Xin did it for him. The very next day, the teacher singled Jiang Chen out for a public scolding. Gu Xin’s handwriting was famously neat, elegant, and the gold standard of the class, whereas Jiang Chen’s writing looked like a chicken had dragged ink across the page. A notebook full of chicken scratch suddenly transforming into calligraphy was a dead giveaway…especially since the two were joined at the hip.

The second disaster happened when Jiang Chen snuck over to Gu Xin’s house specifically to copy his homework. That day, Jiang Chen’s mom happened to drop by to see Gu Xin’s mom, catching Jiang Chen red-handed, aggressively copying every line. His mother chased him up and down the apartment building for an entire hour. Once they got home, she lectured him well into the night, grounded him, and forced him to wash his own laundry for a week under his sister’s strict supervision. For someone as profoundly lazy as Jiang Chen, it was an absolute catastrophe.

In short: copying Gu Xin’s work never ended well.

Groaning, Jiang Chen dragged the workbook closer and began tracing out the problems. By the time he finished procrastinating and working, it was already 8:30 PM.

Gu Xin walked him to the door, watching him wait for the elevator. “I’ll wait for you tomorrow morning. We’ll walk together.”

Jiang Chen leaned heavily against the elevator frame, his backpack slung loosely over one shoulder as drowsiness washed over him again. “Mm.”

Gu Xin frowned slightly. “Why have you been so tired lately?”

“School is just exhausting,” Jiang Chen mumbled. He really had been feeling incredibly sluggish over the past few days, though he couldn’t quite fathom why. No matter how much he slept, it never felt like enough.

Jiang Chen lived on the seventeenth floor, while Gu Xin lived on the tenth. A mere seven floors apart.

The moment Jiang Chen unlocked his front door, his mother’s machine-gun-fire nagging instantly blasted through the apartment.

She was currently scolding his Alpha sister and his Omega little brother. Their family was a rare, textbook example of an ABO full-house…the kind of family dynamic everyone else envied.

Except, well… his older sister was a notorious school delinquent.

Jiang Chen crept inside as quietly as possible. His mother, her hair wrapped up in a towel for a conditioning treatment, was standing right in front of his sister…who towered over her by a full head…unloading a mountain of frustration.

“Jiang Xin! How old are you?! Your teacher is calling me into the office constantly! School has only been in session for two weeks and I’ve already been summoned twice! What did you do today?! Tell me right now or you’re not sleeping tonight!”

Jiang Xin was lounging on a chair with her legs crossed. If someone handed her a cigarette right now, she would look the absolute part of a classic high school gangster. “It’s nothing, honestly. Our homeroom teacher is just a dramatic old man who blows everything out of proportion.”

Jiang Chen stepped lightly, trying to slip past the radar.

Smack! Jiang mom delivered a sharp slap to Jiang Xin’s thigh. “Show some respect to Mr. Yan! Was it a fight this time, or are you dating? Let me tell you right now, if you dare to recklessly mark an Omega out there, I will personally beat you to death!”

Jiang Xin let out a dramatic yelp. The slap sounded so hard it made Jiang Chen’s own thigh throb in sympathy.

“I didn’t mark anyone!” Jiang Xin protested. “Two Omegas in my class just happen to like me, okay? They got into a fistfight and started pulling each other’s hair over it. It literally has nothing to do with me!” Spotting her brother sneaking in, she immediately tried to deflect the heat: “Hey, Jiang Chen’s back!”

Their mother finally whipped around, her eyes landing on Jiang Chen for a split second before her gaze locked onto Jiang Zheng, who was busy taking selfies on the couch. “Jiang Zheng! Go to your room and wash that makeup off your face right now!”

Jiang Zheng, whose makeup was undeniably heavy today, pouted miserably. “But it took me forever to do this look!”

His mother looked like she was about to roll her eyes into the back of her skull. “Your high school entrance exams are next year! Do you ever think about studying?!”

Jiang Zheng muttered under his breath, “If big brother could get into No. 3 High School coming from No. 19 Middle School, why can’t I?”

His mother glared. “What did you get on your math final last semester?!”

The moment grades were mentioned, Jiang Zheng bolted upright and immediately scurried toward his bedroom. “Fine, I’ll wash it off, hmph!” So what if I got a nine percent? Big deal!

His mother pressed a hand to her throbbing forehead and shouted after him, “And walk properly! Stop swaying your hips like that! What kind of male Omega walks like a runway model? You kids are going to give me a heart attack!”

Irony of ironies, Jiang Chen…the lazy Beta…was actually the most academically successful of the three siblings.

Jiang Chen kept his head down, desperately trying to remain invisible. Just when he thought his mother was too exhausted to notice him, her gaze snapped his way.

Fortunately, her voice softened just a fraction. “Jiang Chen, clean up your room. It’s a disaster zone. And strip your bedsheets, they need a wash.”

“Got it,” Jiang Chen called out, dragging his voice. Giving a verbal agreement was easy; whether he actually cleaned it was a problem for future him.

The Jiang family was comfortably middle-class. They didn’t want for food or clothes, but they weren’t wealthy either. His dad worked a technical management role at the subway company. His mom used to be a stay-at-home mother, but after giving birth to Jiang Zheng, the financial strain of mortgage and car payments became too heavy for a single income. Once Jiang Zheng started kindergarten, she re-entered the workforce and climbed her way up to human resources manager.

His parents often lamented to one another how two perfectly normal, straight-A 985-university graduates could produce three such chaotic children. They constantly compared them to Gu Xin downstairs…the perennial straight-A student who brought nothing but pride to his parents.

Still, his parents had been forward-thinking enough to purchase a large apartment early on. Each kid had their own bedroom. Jiang Chen’s room was the smallest of the four, a compromise made because he was a Beta and didn’t require the strict environmental accommodations needed for Alphas and Omegas.

After taking a quick shower, Jiang Chen collapsed onto his bed. Thanks to the nap he’d taken at Gu Xin’s place earlier, he was surprisingly wired. He unlocked his phone, only to find that a normally quiet WeChat group chat was blowing up with over 999+ unread notifications.

He tapped in and realized it was a new class group he’d joined recently; he’d completely forgotten to mute it.

A few of his classmates who he barely knew were gossiping up a storm.

They had been texting since the final bell rang, bouncing from a popular boy band to skincare brands, before the conversation naturally circled back to the school’s hottest gossip: Ou Ruoyi and Gu Xin.

Yang Xiu: OMG OMG OMG, absolute bombshell news!!!

Lin Meimei: What now? Stop being so dramatic every five seconds. If this isn’t actual bombshell news, I’m going to make your life miserable tomorrow. You woke me up, and I have to lead morning reading tomorrow. (Lin Meimei was the class language representative).

Cheng Wen: Spill it already, don’t leave us hanging!

Yang Xiu: [Image] [Image] [Image]

Lan Jingyu: Holy crap?!

Jiang Chen casually tapped on the photos to expand them.

They were candid shots of Gu Xin tutoring Ou Ruoyi from two years ago, back when they were in eighth grade. The girl was stunningly delicate, the boy sharp and handsome; even a simple profile shot looked like a professionally shot movie poster.

Jiang Chen stared blankly at his ceiling, a sudden wave of irritation washing over him.

Liar, he thought bitterly. And he had the nerve to tell me he didn’t have an Omega on his mind during his rut.

Well, look at that. Incontrovertible, photographic proof.

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