Chapter 254: Chapter 246: Marvelous, Marvelous
Xue Rui quickly sent another message: I’m learning how to date. I hear some universities offer relationship guidance courses.
Gu Muxue: Think you can learn? Need a tutor? [Grinning emoji]
Gu Muxue’s face flushed red as she sent the message. ’Why does this sentence feel so embarrassing?’
Tutoring high school subjects was one thing, but does dating really require a tutor?
Xue Rui tapped on his phone screen. ’This girl has gotten pretty aggressive lately.’
But a few seconds later, Gu Muxue unsent the message.
Xue Rui smiled. Now *that* was more like Gu Muxue.
Then, Gu Muxue sent several more messages, unsending each one right after, as if she were extremely hesitant.
Xue Rui thought to himself, ’This girl has already mastered the art of WeChat’s new unsend feature.’
Gu Muxue pouted, flopping onto her pillow. She pinched her teddy bear’s ear and lifted it up. "You know, don’t you? So why won’t you say it?"
Weren’t her intentions obvious enough?
’Xue Rui is definitely getting his revenge, waiting for her to be the one to say ’I like you.’’
But she just couldn’t bring herself to say it. She couldn’t even type it.
After a long hesitation, she sent a message: You used to confess to me every single day. I’ve forgotten how I used to respond.
Xue Rui froze. ’Is this girl finally showing her cards?’
Did this mean she wanted him to try confessing again?
Gu Muxue was bold—she’d even stood in front of him to threaten a group of thugs—but when it came to her feelings, she was so timid and proud.
In contrast, there was that other girl. She was usually a bit spacey and would burst into tears if you raised your voice, yet she had dared to confess her feelings to him point-blank.
Yu Minlan had recently told him in secret that the girl had even declared she would sleep with him within a year...
Xue Rui replied: I was too young back then. I realize now that confessing is a serious matter. It’s hard to stay friends after being rejected.
Gu Muxue flipped her phone face down on the pillow. She squeezed her teddy bear and murmured to herself, "How would you know if you don’t try... I’d say yes now..."
A pang of guilt hit her. In the past, she had simply grown accustomed to rejecting him, always assuming Xue Rui would keep confessing forever. She thought her opportunities were limitless. But now the tables had turned, and she didn’t know what to do.
In truth, she had spent the last month mentally preparing herself, even rehearsing with her teddy bear for hours on end. Yet, whenever she was actually in front of Xue Rui, she would get so nervous she couldn’t speak, as if it were something to be ashamed of.
Xue Rui, meanwhile, was at his wit’s end. He was sitting by the public square, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. The person who had locked up his scooter still hadn’t shown up. He’d gone to the nearby management office to try and borrow a pair of bolt cutters.
But the damn place was already closed for the day. Now he was back, giving the scooter a frustrated kick.
Just then, Gu Muxue started a video call.
Xue Rui accepted the call, smiling and waving at Gu Muxue.
"Why aren’t you home yet?" Gu Muxue asked, a little confused. She could hear a lot of noise in Xue Rui’s background, including the blare of music for square dancing.
She had wanted to talk to him over video, but given his current surroundings...
"What’s wrong?" Xue Rui asked.
"Want to go out tomorrow?" Gu Muxue said.
’Do Xue Rui and I even need a formal confession? Everything feels so natural...’
But Xue Rui was waiting for her to confess. He had taken so many steps toward her; she had to take one forward as well.
Suddenly, a girl shouted at Xue Rui, "Hey! Why are you kicking my scooter?"
Xue Rui sighed. ’Finally,’ he thought.
"Take a look for yourself," Xue Rui said with a point of his finger.
The girl looked around. There were two identical pink electric scooters. It seemed she had locked her scooter to the wrong one...
The girl sheepishly took a cup of milk tea she had just bought out of her bag. "I’m so, so sorry! I wasted so much of your time. Would you like some milk tea?"
The girl with her also looked surprised. Her scooter was already ostentatious enough, but to think someone else would buy the exact same one... and a guy, no less.
She took a good look at the tall boy in front of them and asked uncertainly, "Are you... Xue Rui?"
Xue Rui glanced at the girl. Crap. He had absolutely no memory of her. He couldn’t even guess which school or year she might have been a classmate from. He couldn’t possibly remember everyone.
"Hey, you’re... uh..." Xue Rui pretended to be thinking hard.
"Li Lin," the girl said.
"Right, right, right! I remember now," Xue Rui said, just going along with it.
The girl looked exasperated. Xue Rui had actually forgotten her name.
She pointed to the girl beside her. "She’s Li Lin. I’m Zhang Xinru."
Gu Muxue listened quietly to the events unfolding on the other end of the call. The girl’s name sounded vaguely familiar; she was a classmate from middle school.
"We’re friends on QQ. Let me find you," Zhang Xinru said, starting to scroll through her phone.
Xue Rui’s eyebrow twitched. He had just cleaned out his contacts, deleting everyone he didn’t recognize. There was a high chance she wouldn’t find him. "Everyone’s on WeChat these days," he said.
"Oh, okay. Let’s add each other on WeChat, then," Zhang Xinru said. She felt it was quite a coincidence, buying the exact same scooter as Xue Rui.
Gu Muxue heard that. ’Xue Rui is adding another girl on WeChat?’
At the time, most people still used QQ for messaging; WeChat was just starting to take off. Xue Rui had started talking to her on WeChat a long time ago, and she felt as if it were a special communication tool just for the two of them. Besides Xue Rui, she had only added a few close relatives on WeChat.
But now that Xue Rui was about to add another girl, she felt a small knot of discomfort in her stomach.
After the two girls had left, Gu Muxue spoke up. "You should save her contact with a note this time so you don’t forget her name again."
Her cool voice drifted from the phone. ’Is she jealous?’ Xue Rui wondered.
"I deleted everyone I don’t talk to on QQ a few days ago," Xue Rui explained. "I only suggested WeChat to keep her from realizing I’d deleted her."
Gu Muxue broke into a radiant smile. She’d thought he actually wanted the girl’s contact information, but he was just covering up the fact that he’d deleted her on QQ?
"Are you busy these days?" Gu Muxue asked.
Xue Rui thought for a moment. "Yeah, I might have to travel back and forth between a few cities."
He had thought things would be easier, but he’d just heard from the team in Shencheng that they needed help with some design work. The requirements for the power strip’s outer casing were very demanding on the injection molding factory. The lass was in charge of the design, and there was no way she could handle it all on her own.
"What were you planning to eat today?" Gu Muxue asked.
"Let’s just get it tomorrow, then," Xue Rui said with a smile. The main reason he came back was to spend a few days with her anyway.
"Okay. Be careful on your way," Gu Muxue said, waving goodbye before hanging up.
As Xue Rui was about to put his phone away, he glanced at QQ, intending to see if he could find anyone named Zhang Xinru. Instead, he noticed that Qiu Mengze’s profile picture was active.
Xue Rui sent a simple "Where?" and Qiu Mengze immediately replied with the name of an internet cafe.
Communication between men is just that quick and efficient. No questions asked. Just go.
Arriving at the internet cafe, Xue Rui followed the station number Qiu Mengze had given him and found his spot.
Qiu Mengze patted the seat next to him. "I just traded spots with someone. The computer’s all set up for you."
Xue Rui pulled a Xiaomi 2S from his pocket and handed it to Qiu Mengze.
"How much?" Qiu Mengze asked, excitedly turning the new phone over in his hands. It was a big-name brand, after all.
"It’s used, so don’t worry about it. Just buy me a meal sometime," Xue Rui said.
"Used?" Qiu Mengze looked it over again. He couldn’t find a single bump or scratch. It looked brand new.
"A family member upgraded. It’s barely been used," Xue Rui said casually.
As a developer, the lass had tons of mainstream phone models. He’d once dropped this particular phone into a foot-soaking basin. After she’d fixed it, it just sat around collecting dust. Giving it to Qiu Mengze was a good way to put it to use.
The main reason was that he couldn’t be bothered to buy a phone specifically for Qiu Mengze. An expensive one would be awkward, but a cheap one would be useless. Giving him a free one was the perfect solution; no one could complain about it.
"You’re a true friend. I’ll treat you to a feast later," Qiu Mengze said.
Xue Rui thought something was off. Why wasn’t his friend mentioning the computer? He’d been hounding him about it just a few days ago, but now, nothing?
"So, what are you looking for in a computer?" Xue Rui asked, testing the waters.
"Qin Tong went out with her friend to buy a phone, and her friend had an iPhone. So I lent her a few thousand yuan to buy one for herself. As for the computer... let’s talk about it after the semester starts," Qiu Mengze said.
"Did she ask to borrow the money?" Xue Rui asked.
Qiu Mengze looked smug. "I offered. I couldn’t let her be embarrassed in front of her friend."
"..." Xue Rui was speechless.
He didn’t know the girl, but ’a student with no money insisting on buying an iPhone?’
The craze for iPhones back then was real. They were even nicknamed "kidney phones" because some people had actually sold their own kidneys to buy one...
"You have no idea. She stood so close to me that day, and she even called me by my pet name," Qiu Mengze said with a dopey smile.
Xue Rui was beginning to think there was something wrong with Qiu Mengze’s head. He asked casually, "Are you sure it was a *loan*?"
"Why do you keep asking that? Can’t you ask what I got to touch?"
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