With a shudder, he leaned over the railing in horror and looked down at the fat guy sitting on the lower bunk, holding a laptop, his eyes shining and his smile obscene. Did anyone really need to explain what he was doing? Ning Xuan looked up at the window. The sunlight was bright, the sky clear for thousands of miles. No matter how good his upbringing was, he still had to curse. “Fuck, it’s broad daylight. What the hell are you moaning for? Put on headphones! Headphones!”
Was this for real? Watching porn in broad daylight was one thing, but did the bastard really have to play it out loud so openly? In truth, what Ning Xuan wanted to say even more was that the girl’s moans were not good at all. They sounded fake. Not only did they ruin the dormitory’s positive, healthy atmosphere, they were also noisy enough to make his head hurt.
As his thoughts ran wild, he suddenly froze. Where was he? Could all those ridiculous bloody plotlines about transmigrating and being dumped have merely been one great erotic dream? And a long erotic dream at that! More importantly, one he had while watching the NBA. Just how sexually frustrated did that make him?
Trembling, he poked his head out, wanting to ask the brother who was so busy watching porn that he had forgotten himself what time it was. But the moment Ning Xuan saw him, although the man seemed familiar, he could not remember his name.
What the hell was going on?!
Ning Xuan was instantly thrown into chaos. He looked up at the brother on the upper bunk across from him, then at the brothers on the upper and lower bunks opposite. Each of them looked so familiar that he felt as if he could blurt out their measurements, yet he could not say their names. This strange situation made Ning Xuan break out in cold sweat. He could not very well put on an innocent, kind, humbly studious expression and say to everyone, “Sorry, could you please introduce yourselves? I forgot your names,” could he?
His mind was a mess. With a shudder, he slid—tulu, in Northeastern dialect, meaning to slip or roll—down the ladder.
“Where are you going?” His movement was too loud and disturbed the guy on the opposite bed, who was battling away in front of his computer. The man craned his neck and poked his head out to look at him.
“Going out for a bit.” Ning Xuan forced a smile. In truth, what he wanted to say was that he was going out for a bit to calm down and sort out this inexplicable mess.
“Oh, perfect. Then bring me back a meal.”
“Sure.” In a moment of excitement, he had become someone’s errand runner. Heaven knew he himself was the sort who was too lazy to move. “What do you want?”
“The usual.”
The boy gave him a huge smile, but Ning Xuan almost cried. Who the hell knew what his “usual” was? Why had he even asked that stupid question? If he had simply brought back anything and the guy complained, he could have said, “You didn’t tell me what you wanted.” But now he had gone and asked of his own accord. If he bought the wrong thing, was he supposed to reply, “Please, I don’t even remember your name, how am I supposed to remember what your usual is?” Wasn’t this just creating trouble for himself for no reason?
And that was not all. Birds of a feather flocked together, and apparently everyone here was the type who did not like moving much. The moment they heard someone was bringing back food, each of them began shouting for him to bring something too. They were brothers from the same dormitory, so he could hardly favor one over another. From then on, he learned his lesson and did not ask what they wanted, but they had apparently learned what customer demands were. One said, “That thing you ate last night.” Another said, “Same as him.” Who the hell knew what “him” wanted when Ning Xuan could not even figure out the first order, much less theirs? The most merciful kind of request was: “Anything.”
Wearing a sleeveless undershirt and flip-flops, he stepped out full of resentment. Although his brain did not remember where the restaurants were, his legs did, so he simply followed them. But as he walked, things began to feel wrong.
What school was so artistic and thoughtful that it not only considered the students’ living standards, but also considered the artistic quality of their living environment?
He could not be blamed for overthinking. He could not be blamed for making a fuss. He especially could not be blamed for feeling as though his jaw now belonged to another species entirely. After all, who could be walking through campus with the goal of buying food, only for the high-rise buildings to suddenly disappear, the honking from the streets to vanish, and everything to turn instead into a poetic scene of little bridges, flowing water, and homes?
The antique architecture seemed faintly familiar. He took a deep sniff. Even the air was pristine and untouched by pollution. That faint fragrance of grass and trees was something modern society simply could not imitate.
Lotus leaves stretched one after another across the water. The sound of a qin drifted leisurely, intoxicating to the ear. A clear song gradually rose, pure and melodious. Before he could even think, his legs had already followed the sound on their own. Rugged artificial hills stood among scenery as picturesque as a painting. Green grass was dotted with brilliant flowers, gorgeous and dazzling.
A beauty appeared. The qin music stopped. The clear song broke off. A richly dressed young lady, whose silks and satins looked expensive at a glance, rose to her feet and turned back. Her features were as lovely as a painting. Though her sleeves still carried a youthful air, a trace of outstanding grace could already be seen.
That face seemed familiar. Just like when he had been interacting with his “roommates” earlier, he could not call out her name, yet it felt like more than mere familiarity.
When she saw that the person who had come was him, the girl, already blossoming into a young lady, immediately smiled with bright eyes, her expression more radiant than the sun and more brilliant than flowers. “Brother Xuan!”
Abandoning the guqin that had just been playing such intoxicating melodies, she lifted her luxurious skirts with both hands and ran toward him. Three steps away, she abruptly stopped. Whether from the sunlight or from running those few steps, her delicate fair face was flushed bright red. Lowering her head, she kept twisting the silk handkerchief in her hands.
“Brother Xuan hasn’t come to play with Yi Lan for so long. Yi Lan was so bored staying alone in the residence, so…” Her fingers twisted the handkerchief rapidly. “So Yi Lan came to find Brother Xuan. Will Brother Xuan blame Yi Lan for acting on her own?”
If Ning Xuan had not understood earlier why her face had turned red for no reason and had even mistaken it for the sun’s effect, then if he still failed to understand now, he would be a block of wood. And not just any block of wood, but one hundred percent insulating material, the kind that would not conduct electricity even after being soaked in water.
Since childhood, his luck with women had not been bad, but no one had ever acted coquettishly toward him like this, let alone called him “Brother Xuan” again and again in such a sweet, sugary voice. Although he was enjoying it immensely inside, and his vanity and satisfaction as a man instantly swelled to the point of bursting, he still had to ruin the mood and ask: what was going on?
Although the thoughts in his brain were thoroughly mood-ruining, the movements of his hands and the skill of his mouth were not inferior in the slightest.
He bent down and picked up the handkerchief the girl had dropped because she was too shy and had trembled, then returned it to her. His face was full of smiles, and his voice was so gentle even he nearly became intoxicated. No, this was not gentleness. This was seduction. As a man and the controller of his own body, he naturally knew what it meant when he used this tone and this pitch. To put it nicely, it was gentle comfort. To put it plainly, it was naked temptation. To put it in the most simple and understandable terms, it was called flirting.
“How could I be unhappy that Yi Lan was thinking of me? I only wonder whether Yi Lan thinks of me every day the way I think of you every day.”
There was a hint of loneliness and a hint of melancholy in his low, magnetic voice. Even Ning Xuan himself was shocked. I actually have this kind of skill? The problem was that the content of those words was far too melodramatic and absurd. Damn it, any woman would know this was blatant flirting. Who could be that stupid? And yet look at him, saying it so righteously and seriously. Sure enough, every action divorced from the control of the brain was utterly without order or meaning.
But could someone explain to him why such an old-fashioned, obviously fake line had instantly made such a beauty blush like a ripe fruit and bashfully squeeze out a soft “Mm”?
Holy fuck! Wasn’t this way too ridiculous?!
Next
Futile Devices Scans 
Leave a comment