Chapter 9: I Declare You Have Killed the Game

He checked into a nearby hotel, his room positioned with a perfect view of the Regent Hotel’s main entrance. It wasn't that he possessed the terrifying foresight of a reincarnator, but rather that he had specifically requested a room with good lighting.

Standing by the window, he admired the afterglow of the sunset and suddenly felt he shouldn’t have blocked Lu Mingze so early. As an elder brother, he had a duty and obligation to use his "Sunset" alter ego to help the boy recognize the harshness of society, preventing him from eventually becoming a spineless simp for some "green tea" girl once he entered university or the workforce.

He found the perfect angle to frame the city and the evening glow on his phone screen, but no matter how Lu Mingfei looked at it, he wasn't satisfied. It would be perfect if there were a girl in the photo, standing against the sunset with a radiant smile, her eyes filled with love as she looked at the lens.

"For you, I saved up for half a year, traveling across oceans just to see you~
For this reunion, I even practiced my breathing for when we would finally meet~"

Lu "Bathroom Singer" Mingfei used the showerhead as a microphone, pouring out his longing for his wife. After the song, he combed his wet hair back into a slicked-back style, scrutinized the handsome, soaked figure in the mirror for a moment, and couldn't help but shake his head. He was a little handsome, sure, but his features hadn't fully matured yet, leaving him with a bit of a "small-town" vibe. As for his physique, while he wasn't exactly skin and bones, there wasn't much meat on his frame either. He truly wondered how "he" had survived all these years.

After washing up, he reached for his phone to order takeout, only to realize that in this era, the "Yellow and Blue Legions" of delivery apps didn't exist yet. A sense of melancholy washed over him. Since getting married, he rarely ate takeout, but he occasionally missed the taste of gutter oil. After all, during his time wandering in anger, the best meal he had ever eaten was a two-yuan serving of stir-fried noodles cooked in gutter oil. When he first registered his QQ account, his username was "Wind-Eating Boy," because he had literally survived on nothing but cold northwest wind—which tasted quite bland, as if he hadn't eaten anything at all. If Typhoon Dandelion hadn't arrived in time, he probably would have remained a "Wind-Eating Boy" for a while longer.

Life is hard, Mingfei sighed.

Just as he was getting dressed to head out for food, his phone gave a crisp "ding."

"Go, see you the day after tomorrow."

A message from an avatar of a girl wearing a baseball cap arrived, abrupt and contextless. She went offline immediately after sending it, leaving Lu Mingfei baffled. Was she too broke to afford data, or was she afraid of being pestered by a simp?

"Chen Wenwen... looks a bit familiar."

After a moment of thought, he finally recalled who she was. As he had previously complained, the wealthy second-generation students at Shilan High School didn't need to worry about the trivialities of daily life, so they poured all their energy into chasing the opposite sex. And when these young boys and girls felt an attraction, they often sugar-coated it as "love at first sight"—or, more accurately, they were just obsessed with looks. They liked whoever was pretty.

Besides Chu Zihang and his childhood sweetheart, who dominated the school’s "most popular" rankings, there were three other beautiful girls in Lu Mingfei’s class who garnered much attention. Chen Wenwen was the class beauty. In terms of looks and figure, she wasn't quite on par with the other two pretty girls in class. But because her style was unique—a mix of literary girl and pure first love—she had the budding little capitalists in his class completely infatuated.

His clearest memory of her was a fool who heard she liked dandelions, so he picked a lucky day to confess to her while holding a bouquet of them, with "Dandelion's Promise" playing in the background. Such a grand gesture naturally ended in failure. Not only were the dandelions he’d worked so hard to pick blown away into nothingness, but he was also caught on the spot by the dean who had heard the commotion, turning the event into a local legend at Shilan High School.

In his opinion, that guy was a complete idiot; the "literary girl" act was just a persona she built using dandelions—how could anyone be stupid enough to take it seriously? This method of confession—where a slightly loud breath would blow dandelion seeds all over someone's face—was essentially the equivalent of a "facial," wasn't it? Perhaps there were girls in the world who didn't like roses, but they certainly didn't exist at Shilan High School. The student on duty that day showed great restraint by not beating the poor kid up.

However, no matter how passionate other people's youth might be, it had nothing to do with Lu Mingfei. To the boys in class, he was just a gaming expert and anime fan. He had no common ground with most of the girls, and even less with a literary type like Chen Wenwen; he had hardly ever spoken to her.

But now... looking at that short message—only seven characters including punctuation, which a "simp" could analyze into an eight-hundred-word essay—he had a bad feeling. If he remembered correctly, there was a Literature Club in his group chat list, and that seemed to be the club Chen Wenwen founded. Could he have also fallen under the spell of this little white flower?

He wasn't sure. He’d have to wait and see. Lu Mingfei didn't think he was so shallow as to like this kind of pretentious, "literary" girl; his standard for a partner had always been a girl who could stay up all night playing games with him. Well, excluding those who used hacks, of course. If you’re bad, practice more; if you can't win, don't play. If you want to use hacks, you should just go die.

...

That night, Lu Mingfei ate to his heart's content at a Sha County Delicacies. Steamed dumplings and wontons—a classic combination, a familiar taste. Cassel College was wealthy, but the professors and admissions officers sent here wouldn't come to a small eatery to hunt for food, and he didn't expect to run into any foreigners here.

A cool breeze blew, perfect for an after-dinner stroll to aid digestion. Lu Mingfei squatted on the curb, silently watching the flow of people, the endless stream of vehicles, and the brilliant neon lights of the CBD. The young man’s eyes reflected the lights of a thousand homes, yet, regrettably, not a single one was lit for him.

Just then, a classic melody rang out. The street singer nearby, who had been fiddling with his equipment for a long time, finally started:

"Steel pot, crying while shouting to repair the ladle, broken and rotten pots thrown around..."

The broken, crumbly Cantonese and the singing style that relied entirely on emotion without a shred of technique made the curious onlookers nearby scatter in an instant. The melancholy mood Lu Mingfei had managed to conjure up was shattered by the singing. As expected, if it wasn't midnight, he couldn't get into his emo phase.

Picking his ear, Lu Mingfei couldn't be bothered to watch others in their pairs and turned to leave. Just then, someone in his gaming group was calling him out, asking to be taught a lesson. He decided to head to the internet cafe and show them the meaning of cruelty.

Inside the presidential suite of the nearby Regent Hotel, a red-haired girl leaned against the window, gazing at the distant, flickering nightscape. The lingering frustration of having been thoroughly crushed in the game began to fade. After all, StarCraft was the only skill Lu Mingfei had to show off; it was understandable that she had lost. NOMA, the school secretary, couldn't spare too much processing power to help her play games; otherwise, a mere unawakened internet-addicted teenager would have been easy pickings.

She pulled her gaze back, preparing to take a bubble bath, when her peripheral vision caught a slender figure.

"Huh, that looks like Lu Mingfei." Nono leaned closer to the glass, avoiding the reflection of the interior lights. But it was the weekend, and the CBD was crowded; the thin figure was swallowed by the bustling throng in the blink of an eye.

Kiyomi Shide, who was organizing materials for the interview the day after tomorrow, walked over to look down with her after hearing this, but all she saw was a sea of people where no one could be distinguished from another. "NOMA said Lu Mingfei had a falling out with his aunt and ran away from home. Why would he come here instead of staying at a friend's place?"

After Nono was defeated and ruthlessly mocked by Lu Mingfei, NOMA had notified them that Lu Mingfei’s location wasn't at his usual internet cafe. Then, the school secretary used some trivial means to access the conversation between Lu Mingze and "Sunset," learning that Lu Mingfei had run away. The specific reason was still unclear, but NOMA soon discovered that Lu Mingfei had processed deposits and withdrawals on his account, carrying a "large sum" of cash for reasons unknown.

"The interview is the day after tomorrow. Maybe he wants to buy a decent outfit," Nono said, pulling a page from the materials her senior had been holding and pointing to a specific paragraph. "According to the records, when Shilan High School held its Spring Festival gala last year, all the boys in Lu Mingfei’s class wore suits to dance on stage. He was the only one who had to watch from a corner in the audience because he didn't have a formal outfit."

"Oh, what a sad story," Kiyomi Shide said, her voice filled with pity. She was Japanese, and bullying was rampant there; the mere fact that he couldn't participate in a group activity because he lacked a formal outfit was enough to become a reason for being bullied.

"As for what you said about staying at a friend's place," Nono put down the thin yet unusually heavy document and killed the conversation with a single sentence:

"Does he... even have any friends?"