Chapter 255: Chapter 247: The Three Treasures of a Girl’s Chat
Qiu Mengze looked triumphant, wiggling his eyebrows at Xue Rui incessantly.
Xue Rui was taken aback. ’Is this kid going down the wrong path?’
’Well... it’s better than him being such a clam. Even players have their perks—at least they don’t get taken for a ride.’
"So where’d you touch her?" Xue Rui asked, playing along.
"Her hand, and her face," Qiu Mengze said smugly.
Xue Rui opened his mouth, but then closed it without saying anything.
’And here I thought the kid had really gotten a major score. That’s it?’
"How much did you lend her?" Xue Rui asked.
Qiu Mengze didn’t want to discuss it, but he couldn’t hold out against Xue Rui’s persistent questions. He stammered, "Three thousand."
Xue Rui clicked his tongue. ’For three thousand, what *couldn’t* you touch?’
Did a real relationship need that much money? They were just students. He’d seen plenty of couples from ordinary families who’d pool their living expenses to travel or go shopping together.
But who borrows three thousand before the relationship is even official?
"This morning, I was just browsing at the phone store, and I happened to run into them..." Qiu Mengze recounted the whole story.
Xue Rui nodded slightly. So Qin Tong hadn’t dragged Qiu Mengze there. This meant he hadn’t been set up; it was just a chance encounter.
And then this simp lent out the money he’d saved for a computer.
And according to Qiu Mengze, Qin Tong’s friends had apparently already dropped out of school.
’A dropout buying the latest iPhone, dressed to the nines... fuck, hasn’t she maxed out all her gold digger stats?’
Humans are social animals, and socializing inevitably leads to comparison. If you hang around girls like that, even if you aren’t competitive, to begin with, you’ll gradually be influenced and become like them.
"Why don’t you ask her out?" Xue Rui asked.
"I don’t know where to take her. I just come to the internet cafe every day to play games..." Qiu Mengze scratched his head. He felt he really needed to get some pointers from Xue Rui on this.
"Brother Rui, teach me. Where should you take a girl when you ask her out?" Qiu Mengze asked earnestly.
After all, Xue Rui had two girlfriends; he must be a pro when it came to dating.
"It’s not about where you go. Look over there." As he spoke, Xue Rui glanced toward a corner of the internet cafe.
Qiu Mengze stood up to look. In the corner, a girl was watching a boy play a game, the two of them chatting and laughing.
"Qin Tong doesn’t like video games," Qiu Mengze said.
Xue Rui laughed. He and Qiu Mengze were regulars at the cafe; they’d seen little couples like this more than a few times. Did he really think that girl was there for the games?
Some girls started learning to play for their boyfriends; others just sat beside them, quietly watching dramas.
Some were outgoing, some were quiet, but despite their different personalities, they were all doing the same thing: keeping their boyfriends company at the internet cafe.
The place was a dump—smoky, loud for the first half of the night, and then so cold from the AC in the early morning that you couldn’t sleep. It was one thing for a guy to put up with that just to play games, but why would a girl subject herself to such misery?
Girls their age were much more mature than guys. They couldn’t understand pulling an all-nighter at an internet cafe, but they chose to stay anyway.
Wasn’t it just because they wanted to spend a little more time with their boy?
For two people who actually like each other, it doesn’t matter where they go. What matters is who they’re with.
"Girls who will go shopping with you are a dime a dozen, but a girl who’s willing to pull an all-nighter with you at a net cafe is an absolute keeper," Xue Rui said faintly.
Then, he silently added a thought. ’Of course, good girls like that are rarely cherished. They always end up with players...’
"Should I give it a try?" Qiu Mengze said, tapping on Qin Tong’s QQ profile picture.
Xue Rui glanced over. The profile picture was of a melancholic-looking girl. It looked so dated.
When Qiu Mengze noticed Xue Rui looking, he subconsciously tried to cover his screen.
"Hmm? When you were reading my chat history with Lin Ruoxi, did I try to stop you?" Xue Rui’s brow furrowed.
Qiu Mengze gritted his teeth. ’You were deliberately showing off back then! This is completely different.’
But on second thought, he figured he might as well let him look. There was nothing in his chats with Qin Tong that he needed to hide.
Qiu Mengze opened his chat with Qin Tong and sent a message: "Qin Tong, want to come to the internet cafe?"
But there was no reply for a long time. Bored, Qiu Mengze fiddled with the new phone Xue Rui had given him, inserted the SIM card he’d gotten earlier, and opened Qin Tong’s QQ Space.
Xue Rui leaned in for a look.
[When will you finally notice my humble devotion?] — posted from iPhone 5S (Gold).
Below the text was a mirror selfie, with the phone obscuring half her face.
Qiu Mengze’s eyes shot wide. "Is she talking about me?"
Xue Rui frowned, studying it for a moment before scrolling down through a few more posts.
[If I take off this false mask, will you cry?]
[Can you please not say ’good night’ to so many other people?]
...
"I think she just copied those from the internet," Xue Rui said.
Young students loved to act all deep and profound, but since they lacked any real literary talent, they’d just copy and paste popular quotes they found online.
Besides, girls who posted this kind of stuff usually had a whole legion of simps fawning over them.
Qiu Mengze shook his head. "I don’t think so. She usually only posts in the middle of the night, but today she’s already posted several times during the day."
Xue Rui frowned, unsure if he should be the one to burst Qiu Mengze’s bubble.
He’d just noticed another detail. The device signatures under her recent posts were different. Her older posts had no signature at all.
The one from noon just said "iPhone," but this evening’s post included the full device name. It was like she was flaunting her new phone.
And below it, tons of people were commenting with trendy phrases like "iPhone" and "Bling-Bling Gold"...
Xue Rui was now certain: Qin Tong was just showing off her new phone. It had absolutely nothing to do with Qiu Mengze.
Students, right? Their hobbies were so basic—they’d even compete over who had a higher QQ level, or whose Yellow and Green Diamond subscriptions were flashier. After QQ introduced the feature that displayed what device you were using, it just became a contest of who had the better phone...
He understood the principle, but he found it hard to grasp now. What was there to show off about this stupid thing?
"You’re reading too much into it," Xue Rui said, pointing to the iPhone signature on the screen.
Qiu Mengze swallowed hard. He understood what Xue Rui was implying—that Qin Tong was just being pretentious and vain—and it made him deeply uncomfortable.
He then scrolled to one of Gu Muxue’s QQ posts. The photo showed a small brown teddy bear sitting on a piano, with a delicate hand pinching its nose.
Qiu Mengze pointed to the iPhone tag under Gu Muxue’s post. "See? Gu Muxue does the same thing."
Xue Rui sighed. A girl from her kind of family was long past such petty interests.
"That’s different," Xue Rui said.
He had given her that bear. The girl used it as an emotional outlet, sometimes taking out her frustrations on it. Posting this was her way of expressing her discontent.
"How is it different? Aren’t all girls like that?" Qiu Mengze said with a grin.
"If she wanted to show off, all she had to do was move the bear’s butt a little to reveal the piano’s brand logo. That thing is worth hundreds of thousands," Xue Rui said coolly.
’Who the hell from a family like that would show off a phone?’
’The photos from her overseas trips every year are dazzling enough. Does she really need to use a phone brand to maintain her image?’
Qiu Mengze thought about it, and it seemed to make sense. He then went searching for Lin Ruoxi’s QQ profile.
Xue Rui laughed. ’So the kid was getting competitive, was he? Now he wanted to compare both Gu Muxue’s and Lin Ruoxi’s QQ Spaces.’
"See anything?" Xue Rui asked with a smile.
Lin Ruoxi’s profile picture was still the default avatar from when the account was created.
"It’s like she’s never even online," Qiu Mengze murmured.
"She doesn’t really chat with people. She keeps her status set to invisible," Xue Rui said.
The girl only had a few friends on QQ, and he was the only one she talked to regularly.
"See? Lin Ruoxi has a QQ membership too, and all these useless ’diamond’ subscriptions," Qiu Mengze said, as if this proved all girls were the same.
Xue Rui laughed. He was the one who’d bought them for her; the girl herself had complained that it was a waste of money.
"Uh-huh, you’re absolutely right," Xue Rui said, just to placate him.
The kid was already too worked up. He wouldn’t listen to reason and would just keep finding examples to argue his point.
A short while later, a reply came from Qin Tong: "The internet cafe is too rowdy."
Qiu Mengze: "I’ll be with you."
Qin Tong: "Maybe some other time. I’m gonna go shower."
Xue Rui’s eyebrow twitched. That was a fucking classic line.
There were three classic excuses girls used to end a conversation: "going to sleep," "haha," and "gonna go shower."
Qin Tong clearly didn’t want to talk to Qiu Mengze anymore.
Qiu Mengze: "Okay, good night. My ’good night’ is just for you."
Xue Rui was speechless. Qiu Mengze really couldn’t read between the lines at all.
"She’s going to shower. Usually, she goes right to bed after and doesn’t message me back until the next morning," Qiu Mengze explained.
Xue Rui sighed. It was time to shatter the kid’s self-delusion.
A kid their age, getting a high-end gadget for the first time, would play with it for ages. They’d probably even sleep with it. How could she possibly be going to bed at eight in the evening?
Besides, didn’t Qiu Mengze find any of this strange?
If she was asleep, how did she post those QQ updates in the middle of the night?
"Saying ’I’m gonna go shower’ just means she doesn’t want to talk to you anymore," Xue Rui said.
He tossed his own phone to Qiu Mengze. "Use my QQ account to add her. Let’s see if she’s ’showering’."
As Qiu Mengze caught the phone, his heart leaped into his throat. Was he about to test Qin Tong?
’What if she isn’t showering?’
The thought filled him with a sense of dread.
"I don’t know if this is a good idea..." Qiu Mengze said.
"What’s wrong with it? You’re not her boyfriend. It’s not a test," Xue Rui urged him on.
Gritting his teeth, Qiu Mengze expertly typed in Qin Tong’s QQ number and sent a friend request.
"What should I write in the verification message?" he asked.
"Just write, ’A classmate from No. 2 High,’" Xue Rui said.
Qiu Mengze typed the message as instructed. The friend request was accepted almost immediately.
"I thought she was taking a shower?" Xue Rui asked with a grin.
Qiu Mengze’s face was stiff. "Maybe she has it set to auto-accept friend requests..."
Just as Qiu Mengze was trying to reassure himself, a message came through from her: "You are?"
Qiu Mengze looked at his own chat log, which ended on the "gonna go shower" line. But now, Qin Tong was actively chatting with Xue Rui’s account...
And the cruelest part was, he was holding both phones.
Comments